This is a reprint of John Holt's controversial book about the rights of children and how adults and children can live and learn together more enjoyably and transparently by rethinking their relationships. Under the guise of care and protection, children are kept in the walled garden of childhood, outside the world of human experience, for longer periods than ever before in human history. But for many children and parents, the walled garden of childhood is more like a prison, where authorit...

After years of working to change schools from within—testifying before Congress and addressing audiences around the world about how to make schools better places for children—John Holt founded Growing Without Schooling magazine in 1977 to support self-directed education and learning outside of school. Each issue is a lively exchange among readers and Holt, packed with useful advice, resource recommendations, and all sorts of legal, pedagogical, and parenting ideas from people who pioneered...

Growing Without Schooling (GWS) is the first publication about learning outside of school, homeschooling, and unschooling founded by the late teacher and author John Holt. Published continuously from 1977 until 2001, the 143 issues of GWS are filled with practical, hands-on advice from parents and children who are living and learning in their homes and communities. Each issue also contains legal, educational, and social advice and commentary about self-directed education and how it can be ...

This enduring classic of educational thought offers teachers and parents deep, original insight into the nature of early learning. John Holt was the first to make clear that, for small children, "learning is as natural as breathing." In this delightful yet profound book, he looks at how we learn to talk, to read, to count, and to reason, and how we can nurture and encourage these natural abilities in our children.

Can men overcome their darkest nature and most compelling fears in this life, even if this struggle ultimately leads to their deaths? The wildly spectacular Arctic north of Canada is the setting for The Lost Patrol, a page from history Four men were led by Royal Northwest Mounted Police Inspector Francis J. Fitzgerald as they attempted to deliver annual reports and mail to the district office. The patrol left Ft. McPherson, Northwest Territories in late December 1910 headed for Dawson City...

The classic guide to teaching children at home for a new generation of homeschooling parentsIn 2019, there were more than two million children being homeschooled. That number doubled during the pandemic and is now likely to continue increasing as more parents worry that school might not be the best place for their children to learn and grow.Teach Your Own helped launch the homeschooling movement; now, its timeless and revolutionary message of recog...

The classic and indispensable work on teaching children at home, fully updated for today's new laws, new lifestyles, and the growing new generation of homeschooling parentsToday more than one and a half million children are being taught at home by their own parents. In this expanded edition of the book that helped launch the whole movement, Pat Farenga has distilled John Holt's timeless understanding of the ways children come to understand the world and added up-to...

Very little comes easy in the West, not even murder. Here, Ed Bouchee, a small town private detective living on the northern high plains, is asked to investigate a gruesome murder. From that moment on nothing is as it seems. Up is down and white fades to black. Bouchee and his headstrong Springer spaniel companion, The Dog, wander the slightly mean, out-of-kilter streets of Biederbeck, and the lonesome, often terrifying, mountain backroads of central Montana in search of Mark Grace’s kille...

Natalie and the valley’s derelicts live in a wilderness paradise, but a gold mining company is about to savage a local mountain known as Jane’s Hill. Can they stop it? Probably not. But Natalie -- a woman whose attitude was sizably influenced by the life and writings of Gertrude Stein -- continues to work on the problem as she throws “sedate salons” at her Joint, a two-story lodge of rough-hewn logs, and fishes the clear streams for brookies. She knows the mine will kill the river. That’s ...

The author poses the rhetorical question: “So how did this book come to be? How did this collection of articles and stories wind up in one place in this book?” At a local bookstore in Livingston, Montana, a group of writers were talking about compilations of people’s work and do they have any merit. Yes, they do, was the conclusion – and thus John Holt has culled this marvelous collection of his articles and musings from a number of publications. It’s like a philosophical travelogue, fishi...

Can men overcome their darkest nature and most compelling fears in this life, even if this struggle ultimately leads to their deaths? The wildly spectacular Arctic north of Canada is the setting for The Lost Patrol, a page from history Four men were led by Royal Northwest Mounted Police Inspector Francis J. Fitzgerald as they attempted to deliver annual reports and mail to the district office. The patrol left Ft. McPherson, Northwest Territories in late December 1910 headed for Dawson City...

John Holt tells us, "It's now been more than fifty years that I've been fishing, and roaming and loving Montana and the rest of the northern high plains. Lines on maps don't mean a damn thing to good country or to me. Montana flows into Alberta and British Columbia and Wyoming. The western Dakotas are the same place as Eastern Montana only with different names. Land is connected, not defined by human limitations. I first thought of writing and compiling this book while working a stream tha...