Homeschooling Thoughts

We destroy the love of learning in children, which is so strong when they are small, by encouraging and compelling them to work for petty rewards--gold stars, or papers marked 100 and tacked to the wall, or A's on report cards, or honor rolls, or dean's lists or Phi Beta Kappa keys--in short, for the ignoble satisfaction of feeling that they are better than someone else.
-John Holt






The Government's favourite formula for raising educational standards has the merit of simplicity. We are now top of the European league table in at least one respect: our children are subjected to more national school exams than those in any other country......Parents may comfort themselves with the thought that, however badly educated their children may be when they leave school, they will at least be able to do exams.
- Thomas Armstrong






I can read French as easily as English; and under pressure of necessity I can turn to account some scraps of German and a little operatic Italian; but these I was never taught at school. Instead, I was taught lying, dishonorable submission to tyranny, dirty stories, a blasphemous habit of treating love and maternity as obscene jokes, hopelessness, evasion, derision, cowardice, and all the blackguard's shifts by which the coward intimidates other cowards. And if I had been a boarder at an English public school instead of a day boy at an Irish one, I might have had to add to these, deeper shames still..
- George Bernard Shaw