Rethinking school : how to take charge of your child's education

Rethinking school How to take charge of your child's education

Susan Wise Bauer

Book - 2018

"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, th...e 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.

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Subjects
Education > Parent participation.
Home schooling.
Published
New York : W.W. Norton & Company [2018]
Language
English
Main Author
Susan Wise Bauer (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xiv, 264 pages ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-251) and index.
ISBN
9780393285963
  • About This Book
  • Part I. The System
  • Chapter 1. The Way We Do School
  • Chapter 2. The Three Biggest Myths About School
  • Part II. Mismatches
  • Chapter 3. You Can't Make the Earth Go Around the Sun Faster
  • Why Age = Grade (It's Prussia's Fault)
  • Three Questions for Evaluating Maturity
  • Action Plan
  • Chapter 4. Differences, Disabilities, and Disorders
  • The Three Labels
  • Action Plan
  • Chapter 5. The Perils of the Gifted and the Good
  • What Is Giftedness?
  • Four Challenges of Giftedness
  • Action Plan
  • Chapter 6. The Toxic Classroom
  • Uncovering the Problem
  • Action Plan
  • Part III. Taking Control
  • Chapter 7. Basic Principles (Or, How Not to Be "That" Parent)
  • Laying the Foundation
  • The Way Forward
  • Chapter 8. Control the Tests
  • What the Tests Measure
  • The Right to Refuse
  • Types of Tests: What They Are and How to Use Them
  • The Way Forward
  • Chapter 9. Challenge the Homework Monster
  • When Homework Doesn't Work
  • The Way Forward
  • Chapter 10. Accelerate (But Don't Necessarily Skip)
  • Single-Subject Acceleration
  • The Way Forward
  • Chapter 11. Shift the Method
  • Sample Projects Designed for Multiple Intelligences
  • The Way Forward
  • Chapter 12. Teach, Yourself
  • The Way Forward
  • Part IV. Rethinking the System
  • Chapter 13. The End Result
  • Thinking Backward
  • Thought Experiment 1
  • Chapter 14. The Child's Vision
  • The Challenge of Self-Awareness
  • Challenges for Your Child
  • Thought Experiment 2
  • Chapter 15. All the Other Things School Does
  • The Noneducational Tasks
  • Questioning the Agent
  • Thought Experiment 3
  • Chapter 16. Solving for X
  • Why Imagine?
  • Thought Experiment 4
  • Part V. Opting Out
  • Chapter 17. Deciding to Homeschool
  • Homeschooling Styles
  • How to Investigate
  • Chapter 18. Getting Started in Five Steps
  • Chapter 19. Developing Independence
  • The Stages of Independent Work
  • Chapter 20. Out-of-the-Box Teaching Strategies
  • A Caveat
  • The Strategies
  • A Final Caution
  • Chapter 21. Radical Alternatives
  • Different Paths
  • Postscript: About College
  • Appendix A. High School and the Transcript
  • Appendix B. Skills vs. Content
  • Appendix c. A Brief Essential Bibliography
  • Works Cited
  • Index
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Homeschooling advocate Bauer (The Well-Educated Mind) aims to help parents whose children fit imperfectly into what she deems the "artificial" one-size-fits-all American school system in this highly opinionated but eminently practical book. Bauer makes a passionate case for why the K-12 system desperately needs to be rethought, and for why our criteria for judging educational success must change. These arguments serve as springboards for Bauer to discuss her suggestions of how parents should make the educational system work for them. Bauer describes guiding families to use the options available to their kids within the educational system, such as pursuing single-subject acceleration, opting out of stressful processes such as state testing, and working with teachers to find alternative arrangements for kids during class time, such as independent study. She also details hybrid home-school approaches such as after-school programs, independent study during class time, and gap years. Finally, Bauer pushes parents toward "having the courage to step out" with a homeschooling quick guide, and with discussions of-though not unqualified support for-even more radical approaches such as apprenticeships and "unschooling." Bauer's guide to the various options available to struggling kids, inside and outside the educational system, will be both comforting and instructive to their parents. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Bauer, coauthor of The Well-Trained Mind and an advocate for a classical education through homeschooling, offers a detailed look at how modern schooling can be a mismatch for student's needs. For those with a disability, a developmental delay, or giftedness, the structure of age-based classes focused on a single way of understanding and behaving may not work. Bauer breaks down ways in which the system is failing these students and offers advice on how to work around the system to find better options for students. While Bauer does advocate for ways to help the system accommodate individuals, including having frank discussions with principals and teachers, she also advocates for getting out of the system entirely. This bias toward homeschooling influences everything Bauer presents, however, even with this partiality, the balance of firsthand stories of school failure combined with the author's own experiences and practical tips make this book very straightforward and informative. VERDICT For parents seeking support and advice for ways to address their discontent with their children's schooling. -Rachel Wadham, Brigham Young Univ. Libs., Provo, UT © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by School Library Journal Review

Bauer, coauthor of The Well-Trained Mind and an advocate for aclassical education through homeschooling, offers a detailed look at how modern schooling can be a mismatch for student's needs. For those with a disability, a developmental delay, or giftedness, the structure of age-based classes focused on a single way of understanding and behaving may not work. Bauer breaks down ways in which this system is failing these students and offers advice on how to work around it to find better options for students. While Bauer does advocate for ways to help the system accommodate individuals, including having frank discussions with principals and teachers, she also advocates for getting out of it entirely. This bias toward homeschooling influences everything Bauer presents; however, even with this partiality, the balance of firsthand stories of school failure combined with the author's own experiences and practical tips make this book very straightforward and informative. VERDICT For parents seeking support and advice for ways to address their discontent with their children's schooling.-Rachel Wadham, Brigham Young University Libraries, Provo, UT © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A manifesto with a lesson plan: home-schooling champion Bauer (The Story of Western Science: From the Writings of Aristotle to the Big Bang Theory, 2015, etc.) continues her case for educating outside the system."When an artificial system classifies and segregates people (as opposed to cell phones, say, or sewage), some people will inevitably fit into the system better than others." So observes the author, who goes on to say that she was one who didn'tand managed to get through a doctorate without the high school diploma that we all supposedly require, having gotten into college in the first place with a "mom-generated transcript." Some children need the K-12 system, writes Bauer. Other's don't and can actually be harmed by what is, after all, something geared to "a Platonic child, one who doesn't suddenly melt down, or get overwhelmed by a tidal wave of hormones, or unexpectedly need fourteen hours of sleep." In any event, Bauer urges, the parent has to take charge: if a child remains in school but has problems, then it's up to the parent to figure out why Johnny can't read or Jenny is bored. The possibilities are manifold when it comes to why: autism may be at work, or giftedness, or otherness that the system isn't able to accommodate. Bauer writes in a steadily reassuring tone before really broaching the subject of home schooling, which, she notes, is not for everyonebut then, she adds, if you're battling the system because your child is lost, bored, buried, or bullied, "then you're already spending tremendous amounts of energy fighting to change those things" and might as well take on the task of teacher yourself. On that point, Bauer offers much of practical value, urging, for instance, that we misinterpret the Common Core to mean that certain courses be part of the curriculum when it's really certain skills that need to be mastered.A welcome operator's manual for parents of school-age children, inside or outside the K-12 paradigm. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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