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The revised edition of John Holt’s Teach Your Own by Pat Farenga is almost twenty years old and still much of it rings true. This version has almost 50% of the text in Pat’s personal notes, commenting on and supplementing the original work by the father of the unschooling movement, and it brings another dimension (and the perspective of an unschooling parent) to John’s work.

Teach Your Own is part guide to unschooling for parents, part examples of how real children learn from the author’s personal experience, and part recommendation to schools on the best way to cooperate with homeschoolers and thereby improve their own situation both socially and financially. Personally, the parts I enjoyed most were the examples of children figuring out left and right, learning from each other, and interacting with real world work. With a young child myself, and an intention to homeschool, these stories inspire and excite me for the potential of the years to come.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book for the second time, although I skimmed over some of the recommendations for school this time, partly because it’s focused primarily on the American system (although some of the earlier letters from children were from Brits), and partly because we are now pretty committed to testing out unschooling instead of sending J to school, so it was simply of less interest to me this time around.

One of the wonderful aspects of unschooling is that you can change the way that your children are able to learn to absolutely suit them- it’s the main difference from sending them to mainstream school. This means that if your child learns best by watching documentaries, physically making things, reading copious books, visiting new places, playing with others all day, inventing their own games, joining in with your activities, or even by choosing to study from textbooks and fill in worksheets, you can facilitate that learning. This book provides both studies and reasoning as to why this style of education is best for many children, and real world examples from parents who have been trying homeschooling and unschooling.

My overall impression was of reassurance. John Holt’s research was one of the instigating factors in my pursuit of a better way to help my children learn at home, and it still is comforting to know that decades of research, studies, and practical application have shown that children had benefited from this one-to-one education. Incidentally, it is also the only unschooling book my husband (a teacher) has read and he is fully committed to our approach to raising children at home in this way. I think that alone speak volumes to the persuasive power of this informative text.