Reddit reviews How Children Fail (Classics in Child Development)

Agreed. Once upon a time, science and philosophy were much more closely related than they are today. We are polarizing individual aspects of the arts, which has done more to create robotic thinkers than open minded learners. Homeschooling is a great first step to breaking his daughter out of the conveyer belt thinking process, and introducing her to every aspect of the world of education, even religion, and allowing her to pursue those subjects that interest her most. This will feed her curiosity and allow her to become her own person in the long run. Pushing her toward Atheist thinking is as dangerous as pushing her toward religious thinking, if the goal is to allow her to choose her own path and ideas, and truly become an individual thinker. If her religious upbringing by her mom is more restrictive, and you create an open environment that is truly open to all possibilities, she will be a great leader.

But it starts with you, the parent. If all you are doing is teaching her things in direct opposition to the mom, then this is petty and not in your daughter's best interest, nor will it draw her toward your way of thinking, it will repel it. If your goal is to have her think like you do, then, again, you are not really raising a "free thinker" are you? So start with your own education, your own style and teaching philosophy. Here are some great books to give different and honest perspectives. Do what works for you.

• How Children Learn - Holt
  
• How Children Faill - Holt
  
• The Unschooling Unmanual
  
• Dumbing us Down - Gatto
  
• Thomas Jefferson Education (This one is a method of instruction, and though he encourages use of the Bible as classic literature, he aslo emphasizes that, if the Bible isn't your cup of tea, there's plenty out there that will be)
  
  Enjoy the journey!
  
  *Edited for formatting.

Whether or not you're going all the way to homeschooling or finding alternatives such as Montessori or Waldorf, here's my two cents as well. Read up on it. I'll probably come off as bit of an ass, but it's your kid, what more relevance do you need to find and buy lots and lots of manuals(so to speak). Kids're pretty complicated, or so I've heard.

I'm not an expert, but I have a few titles I'll promptly lay on whatever friend of mine starts to procreate first. In my opinion these aren't 'crazy' books, and I sincerely hope you'll take them seriously.

How Children Learn

How Children Fail

Punished By Rewards

The Homework Myth

John Taylor Gatto has written some stuff as well, but Google can find that for you. Read and read more. I couldn't begin to describe my time in the famous twelve years without plenty of cussing.

Take an interest, is my advice.

Your focus on detention is arbitrary. It's like saying it's unfair that hostages don't have access to pizza. Maybe, but the whole state of being-a-hostage is unfair. Instead of obsessing about their lack of pepperoni and mushrooms, why not, instead, focus on the actual problem?

• We force children to go to school.
  
• We force children to study specific subjects at school.
  
• We force children to do homework after school.
  
• We stigmatize them if they fail at school.
  
• We use school grades as one metric of mental health.
  
• In most schools, we force children to be subject to archaic. pedagogical methods--once that have been proven to be ineffective.
  
• And, yes, we force children who have (in my view) naturally bucked against this system, to stay in school longer than kids who accept it.
  
• In most schools, children learn very little, especially given the amount of time the spend there.
  
• In many cases (e.g. when forced to read Shakespeare), they often develop a lifelong hatred of the subject.
  
• Many children spend years in school being bullied, mocked, and ostracized.
  
• Throughout this time, they're repeatedly told all this is "good for them," and, in the end, like serial abusers, they inflict in on their own kids, telling them it's good for them.
  
  All of this stuff has been studied for decades. We know that most schools are run horribly, according to unsound educational principals. But that never changes.
  
  When psychologists or neuroscientists discover something about learning or education, it takes years or decades to affect classroom practices, if it ever does.
  
  Schools aren't generally affected by Science. Instead, they are buffeted by politics and held fast by tradition.
  
  See
  
  
• Wounded By School
  
  
• Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes
  
  
• The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing
  
  
• video: The 3 Most Basic Needs of Children & Why Schools Fail
  
  
• Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood
  
  
• [A Mathematician's Lament (PDF)] (https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf); longer book version: A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form
  
  
• Ken Robinson's TED talk: Do Schools kill creativity?
  
  
• How Children Fail
  
  
• Unschooling
  
  
• Why do we get frustrated when learning something? (written by me)
  
  I am skeptical that I will CYV, even though I believe that this is the best argument against it--not your view that detention is wrong, but that it's not even worth talking about. Sure, detention is a bad thing--but not the worst thing--about a horrible, corrupt, abusive system.
  
  I'm skeptical, because the system is so deeply entrenched in our culture. And the most people can do is argue about small tweaks: whether we should use this textbook or that, the length of Summer break, the size of classrooms, etc.
  
  The debate about Creationism vs Evolution in schools is a good example. If the Evolution folks (or the Creationist folks) win, they will pat themselves on the back and walk away happy, never glancing back and noticing that the same shoddy educational methods are being used now as before--with just one correction.
  
  Yes, Dominoes is bad pizza. It won't suddenly become good pizza if you put it in a less-ugly box. I agree that the box is ugly, but why focus on it? It's not the core problem.

Thank you for the reading recommendation. It's going on my list.

I've developed similar leanings over the years and I partly attribute that to having read this book.

This might not quite be your speed, but How Children Fail and How Children Learn by John Holt both have had a profound influence on my career choices and approach as a teacher.

Also, while technically a parenting book, How to Talk so Kids Will Listen, and Listen so Kids Will Talk is the backbone of my classroom management approach.

If education interests you, you can't go wrong with How Children Fail, How Children Learn, or any of John Holt's later works. Truly inspiring.

The Lives of Children by George Dennison is also amazing.