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Posts Tagged ‘John Taylor Gatto’

This post reviews Philip Brand, The Neighbor’s Kid: A Cross-Country Journey in Search of What Education Means to Americans (Capital Research Center, 2010).

Brand, a young staffer at the Capital Research Center, a conservative non-profit best known for its opposition to labor unions and environmentalists, here recounts his experiences during the 2008-2009 school year when he and his brother took a road trip that led them across the entire United States four times.  In route he visited dozens of different kinds of schools, including several homeschools. (more…)

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This post reviews Carol Plum-Ucci, Homeschooling Abbey: Your Basic Mom Tries Home Education & Tells All (BookSurge, 2008)

Plum-Ucci, best known for her young adult thrillers, here pens an intriguing memoir/meditation on her homeschooling experience with her daughter Abbey.  (more…)

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This post reviews John Taylor Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling (New Society Publishers, 2009).

John Taylor Gatto is a legendary figure in the world of homeschooling.  My bookon homeschool history describes how by the late 1980s secular and conservative Protestant homeschoolers increasingly became estranged.  The large Christian conventions and publications stopped inviting as speakers leaders who did not share their worldview.  Gatto is a standout exception to this generalization.  His stature is great both among conservative homeschoolers like those affiliated with HSLDA and among more liberal homeschoolers like those affiliated with Home Education Magazine, and he regularly keynotes conferences and conventions of all parties.

This, his latest book, is something of a grab-bag of classic Gatto themes.  My review here will not systematically work through his chapters but will use it as an excuse to make some comments on Gatto and his meaning for the homeschooling movement.  (more…)

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