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Dreamers, Discoverers & Dynamos by Lucy Jo Palladino
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| Psychologist Lucy Jo Palladino claims that 20 percent of children have what she calls the Edison trait: "dazzling intelligence, an active imagination, a free-spirited approach to life, and the ability to drive everyone around them crazy." She named the trait after Thomas Edison, who flunked out of school despite his obvious brilliance. Looking for a practical, intelligent alternative to the ADD-hysteria? This is an excellent start.
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Teaching Montessori In The Home: The Pre-School Years by Elizabeth G. Hainstock, Lee Davis
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| The author gives instructions for making many of the Montessori materials at home, with common household items or easy-to-obtain craft supplies. Throughout the book she offers suggestions for alternatives to materials which are typically used in a Montessori classroom. Let the comments of one satisfied reader speak for themselves: “The methods really worked! My children are now ages 25 and 28. In the late 60's I purchased this book and made all the materials to teach the children from infancy. Both children could read phonetically by age 3, both attended Montessori schools from age 3 to 6, both were Merit Scholars and both still love to learn. I am purchasing an updated copy for my daughter to use for her first child."
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Teaching Montessori In the Home: The School Years by Elizabeth G. Hainstock, Lee Davis
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| A follow-up book to E. Hainstock's earlier work, Teaching Montessori in the Home: The Pre-school Years. She emphasizes reading and mathematics exercises in this book, and also states specifically that she intends these exercises to supplement children's learning experiences in a public school environment. As she did in her previous book, Hainstock displays the materials needed for the exercises and shows how to make them with items that are easily obtained. She goes through the exercises in great detail, showing each level step by step. This book lacks many items which are present in an elementary Montessori classroom, such as geography materials, botany and zoology materials, and art and music materials, so it is best used as the author intended, as a supplement to a child's traditional educational experience.
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A History of the United States And Its People by Edward Eggleston
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| This is the third volume in the Edward Eggleston history series. It is a comprehensive American History text spanning the periods from the discovery of the New World to about 1890. Intended for the older child, this edition is profusely illustrated with over 400 pictures, including many maps, all meticulously reproduced from the originals. You won't find political correctness or revisionism nonsense here. Just solid American history. The book is arranged by topic so the student sees cause and effect clearly; not only making the teacher's job easy, but also stimulating the student's interest. A Study by Topic section, fill-in exercises, maps and illustrations, suggestions to teachers and a useful, comprehensive index all contribute to the success of this book. Recommended for Ages 12 and up.
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Turning Back The Tide of Illiteracy by Marguerite Field Hoerl
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| The root of today’s reading (and educational) crisis is lack of thinking skills. Kids learn how to FEEL and express their emotions. They learn about their ethnic identity, their gender identity, and how to conform to government edicts, while the rules of language and logic take a back seat. Hoerl devotes fully a third of her book to demonstrating how a phonics curriculum works, helping to teach your child, or even an adult non-reader, how to read in just a few weeks or months. Reports one happy reader: “ My 2nd-grade son is at work with me today. He just piped up ‘New chapter! Page 106!’ He's reading at the 5th grade level. Need I say more?"
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How to Raise a Brighter Child : The Case for Early Learning by Joan Beck, John Beck
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| Having a baby? Read this book now. Among other questions, it answers: Can pre-school children learn to think and develop? Joan Beck describes how to stimulate young minds intellectually--with profoundly positive consequences for later life. Deserves to be considered a classic.
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Facts Not Fear: A Parent's Guide to Teaching Children About the Environment by Michael Sanera & Jane S. Shaw
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| Could global warming melt the polar ice caps and submerge coastal cities? Are the rain forests about to disappear? Does humankind face imminent starvation due to overpopulation? If you have children between kindergarten and twelfth grade, chances are they're being taught these unproven articles of environmentalist faith. In reality, overwhelming evidence exists to counter modern dogma. Help your kids learn all the facts. The book's subtitle might be: "What Your Public School Teacher Never Told You."
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Losing Our Language by Sandra Stotsky
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| Though multiculturalism was introduced as a way to improve the self-esteem of minorities, Stotsky presents evidence that the gap between white and minority students has widened since its introduction. She shows how many of the great achievements in American science, technology, and political life in the past 200 years are missing, just because "a story about them would call attention to a white male." In actual practice, today's multiculturalists are simply replacing one form of racism and ignorance with another.
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Separating School & State by Sheldon Richman
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| Why do we have public schools? If they are so wonderful, why must they depend upon the coercion of taxation to stay in business? The author examines the underlying philosophy behind public schools and paints a picture of what a truly privatized, non-coercive educational system could look like. A glimpse of what the future might be, once people wake up and realize socialized education is no better than socialized medicine or socialized anything.
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Inside American Education: The Decline, The Deceptions, The Dogmas by Thomas Sowell
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| Only in the field of education do we keep proposing more of what obviously does not work. People fail (or refuse) to realize that when you subsidize more of something you can count on getting more of it. Sowell's excellent book describes in detail just how irrational most of today's public schools really are. They never could survive without coercive government funding.
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The Montessori Method by Maria Montessori
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| Maria Montessori pioneered a method of education based upon human reason and the value of the individual. She was neither permissive nor authoritarian. She recognized humans as rational beings with a desperate need to develop their minds from the earliest age possible. This book is Montessori's own exposition of the theory behind her innovative educational techniques. She shows parents, teachers and administrators how to "free a child to learn through his own efforts."
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Dumbing Down Our Kids by Charles J. Sykes
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| Everyone thinks the solution is to throw more money at failing public schools. But there's not enough money in the world to counter the effects of bad ideas. Charles Sykes illustrates just how horribly bad many of the ideas taught by today's schools really are.
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Market Education: The Unknown History by Andrew J. Coulson
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| Public schools are beyond reform. They are, by their very nature, ineffective and corrupt because they are based on coercion and compulsion. Consequently, they cannot go out of business. When they perform poorly, they obtain more and more funding, rather than less. The only solution to the growing education crisis is to privatize education altogether, in the same way and for the same reasons the grocery store and computer industries are private. At last, an author who recognizes the truth and documents his assertions with historical examples. At last, a book on privatization of education which even The Washington Post must acknowledge is worth reading.
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The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home by Jessie Wise, Susan Wise Bauer
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| Tired of sending your kids to mediocre public schools, and worrying about growing threats of school violence? Can't afford a good private school? Then take charge of your child's education! Wise and Bauer offer a "parent's guide to a do-it-yourself, academically rigorous, comprehensive education -- a classical education." Reading, writing, grammar and mathematics form the core of this politically incorrect (but excellent) curriculum. The authors instruct you, step by step, on how to give your child an academically rigorous, comprehensive education from preschool through high school; one that will train him or her to read, to think, to understand, to be well-rounded and curious about learning.
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