San Francisco Public Library

Rethinking school, how to take charge of your child's education, Susan Wise Bauer

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-251) and index

index present

non fiction

Rethinking school

bibliography

988293766

Susan Wise Bauer

how to take charge of your child's education

"Our K-12 school system is an artificial product of market forces. It isn't a good fit for all--or even most--students. It prioritizes a single way of understanding the world over all others, pushes children into a rigid set of grades with little regard for individual maturity, and slaps "disability" labels over differences in learning style. Caught in this system, far too many young learners end up discouraged, disconnected, and unhappy. And when they struggle, school pressures parents, with overwhelming force, into "fixing" their children rather than questioning the system. With boldness, experience, and humor, Susan Wise Bauer turns conventional wisdom on its head: When a serious problem arises at school, the fault is more likely to lie with the school, or the educational system itself, than with the child. In five illuminating sections, Bauer teaches parents how to flex the K-12 system, rather than the child. She closely analyzes the traditional school structure, gives trenchant criticisms of its weaknesses, and offers a wealth of advice for parents of children whose difficulties may stem from struggling with learning differences, maturity differences, toxic classroom environments, and even from giftedness (not as much of a "gift" as you might think!). As the author of the classic book on home-schooling, The Well-Trained Mind, Bauer knows how children learn and how schools work. Her advice here is comprehensive and anecdotal, including material drawn from experience with her own four children and more than twenty years of educational consulting and university teaching. Rethinking School is a guide to one aspect of sane, humane parenting: negotiating the twelve-grade school system in a way that nurtures and protects your child's mind, emotions, and spirit."--Dust jacket

Part I: The system. The way we do school ; The three biggest myths about school -- Part II: Mismatches. You can't make the Earth go around the Sun faster ; Differences, disabilities, and disorders ; The perils of the gifted and the good ; The toxic classroom -- Part III: Taking control. Basic principles (or, How not to be "that" parent) ; Control the tests ; Challenge the homework monster ; Accelerate (but don't necessarily skip) ; Shift the method -- Part IV: Rethinking the system. The end result ; The child's vision ; All the other things school does ; Solving for X -- Part V: Opting out. Deciding to homeschool ; Getting started in five steps ; Out-of-the-box teaching strategies ; Radical alternatives -- Postscript: About college