The Teenage Liberation Handbook

The Teenage Liberation Handbook, Grace Llewellyn, Lowry House, 1991

This is a very complete look at how anyone can get a real education without going to school.

The author, a former English teacher, starts with some scathing comments about the institution of school. One of the goals when compulsory schooling came into effect in America was to create obedient factory workers who don't waste time by daydreaming or talking to each other. Schools took on the task of stamping out other cultures. Schools need you to believe that you can't learn without them. To those who honestly think that if they don't spend a large portion of their childhood sitting in a room having stuff poured in one ear, and usually going out the other, their only life path is drug addict or bum, reading this book will be a waste of time.

This is not a spur-of-the-moment decision, for the young person or the parents, so the author goes painlessly through the whole process. An important thing to do in the beginning is to get a copy of the relevant state laws and find a local homeschooling group for questions. The target audience is teens, so she talks about how to ask your parents, and what to do if they say No. Once you're out of school, work to re-kindle your passion for it, whatever it is, a passion that school has worked to squash like a bug. Talk to the local school board about staying eligible for after-school activities, and to otherwise not make an enemy out of them. As you get older, the book explores jobs, internships and how to prepare for college. It also has many quotes from people who have done it, left school or never gone to school, and become happy and successful. learning what they want to learn, not what someone else thinks they "must" learn.

This book is wonderful. It does a fine job of showing that sitting in a classroom for many years and getting a "good" education as the only way to make something of yourself is little more than propaganda. I wish this book was available when I was in junior high school.