Originally Posted by raptor_dad
Originally Posted by Zen Scanner
#4 Read a book about unschooling. It at least presents a frame of mind to understand you aren't necessarily taking on an 8 hour a day hands on job.

Perhaps you could elaborate on this...

I've read fairly broadly and I've never found a modern unschooling book that I like or identify with. Ds has been unschooled at home for the last 3 years. The "unschooling" books I identify with would be John Holt's "How Children Learn" and "How Children Fail", Ivan Illich's "Deschooling Society", and maybe some of Gatto's stuff. More broadly, Neil Postman's stuff is good... his "Teaching as a Subversive Activity" could be seen as pro-unschooling.

All of these books come out a 60s-70s alternative education strand. I find them inspiring for gifted kids. Despite being tapped into the urban, somewhat anarchist, local attachment parenting scene, I've never found the same connection with the radical unschooling literature for gifted kids. There are plenty of folks doing cool stuff but the books just don't speak to me... they have a greater anti-intellectual bias.

Could you suggest some good modern unschooling books for folks with gifted kids?

I'm not widely read on the topic. I enjoyed The Unschooling Handbook not so much as a guide or how to, but it gave us a frame of reference of just what a kid could do on their own and talked about their own drive to learn.

Contemplating homeschooling without realizing that kids are generally born with a drive to learn is intimidating. Seeing that guide and co-learner are likely better roles for you with your gifted kid than omniscient autocrat is liberating.