Recommended Books

Education/pedagogy.....

Freedom to Learn: Carl Rogers

The following is a quote from the Amazon site, if you are only going to read one book or one author on child-centered education it should be Carl Rogers, and it should be this book.

'This is the text that championed a revolutionary approach to education that changed the way we teach our children. Now, in the Third Edition, it's challenging the status quo with twenty years of evidence that defies current thinking. Five exciting new chapters focus on issues of importance now and in the future--learning from children who love school; researching person-centered issues in education; developing the administrator's role as a facilitator; building discipline and classroom management with the learner; and person-centered views of transforming schools. Freedom to Learn, Third Edition is written in the first person, with two goals in mind--to aid the development of the minds of children and young persons, and to encourage the kinds of adventurous enterprises being carried out daily by dedicated, caring teachers in creative classrooms and supportive schools throughout the nation.'

Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century: Howard Gardener

The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach : Howard Gardener

Gardner says that our job is to help children become who they are supposed to be, not what we think they should be. Howard Gardner is a professor at Harvard who has looked at the different types of human intelligence for many years. His research is very useful when designing curriculum and looking at how people learn.

The Power of Play: David Elkind

The importance of play at all stages of development. Also, why a child needs unstructured time.

Freedom and Beyond, also How children Fail: John Holt

There are several important books written by Holt. He started the 'unschooling' movement in the U.S. His main contention is that learning takes place naturally and children should be trusted to learn, school is often an anti-thesis to learning.

Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing: A.S.Neill

Everyone should know this educator and his theories. When I was 13 I fell in love with this man and his school and I think that he has a lot to teach us about valuing children.

Theories of Childhood: An Intro to Dewey, Montessori, Erikson, Piaget and Vigotsky: Carol G. Mooney

These are the theorists that may be the most influential in educational theory. I am particularly fond of Vigotsky and Piaget.

The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self: Alice Miller

This can be a difficult book, but an enlightening one which can bring one to a new understanding of emotions and emotional reactions.

Effective Communication and conflict resolution

Parent Effectiveness Training: Thomas Gordon. How to listen and speak to children in an effective and respectful manner.

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk: Adele Faber, Elaine Mazlish Effective communication style that allows children to express their feelings. This is a very useful book if you find that you don't know how to keep from imposing your views on your child (we all tend to do this) It is effective in communicating with anyone.

Between Parent and Child: The Bestselling Classic That Revolutionized Communication : Dr. Halm Ginott This book was published in 1965 and might seem a bit simplistic, but the suggestions on how to communicate and how to use reflective listening are excellent.

Siblings Without Rivalry: Adele Faber, Elane Mazlish

Parenting....

The Competent Child: Jesper Juul. Jesper Juul a Danish family therapist has written this important but little known book which so beautifully encapsulates everything we are advocating at the Family School in terms of family values, moral, equal dignity of adults and children.  

Advocating principles of how to treat children with dignity and recipriocity between parent and child  by listening carefully to what they are saying, taking them seriously, enabling them to take more responsibility for themselves including at an early age, lots of practical examples. Straight forward and easy to read but also deeply meaningful; it demonstrate how the family has for centuries been a power structure  how children can express their feelings from birth and are eager to cooperate. it is the parents who must work hard to listen and learn from their children, invisible children, how we assess and judge our children so often rather than "seeing" them and delighting and sharing in their experience. 

First he reviews family values - discussing the conventional power structures, and relationships that so many families have, even those who are trying to parent in more progressive ways, the tendency that we have to see children as potential rather than actual beings, as antisocial "semi beings" and how we as a result assume that first they need to be subjected to massive influence and manipulation from adults and second they have to reach a particular age before they can be regarded as equals and real people. Jesper Juul questions this assumption believing that most of what we traditionally understand by the term upbringing (ranging from "permissive" to "authoritarian") is both superfluous and directly harmful, by being unhealthy for children but also hindering adults precluding their growth and development and it has a destructive influence on the quality of relationships between children and adults.

He consider how behaviour we conventionally consider moral may well be unethical and includes chapters on self esteem and self confidence, responsibility versus service, personal and social responsibility and over responsibility, the importance of 'seeing' children, the difference between needs and wants, the need for us to set limits for ourselves rather than our children. Highly recommended.

In Defense of Childhood; Protecting Kids Inner Wildness:  Chris Mercogliano shows in this book how important it is that children are given the time and space to experiment and experience life for themselves, which is increasingly rare in modern affluent society. This is something we at The Family School wholeheartedly agree with.

The Disappearance of Childhood, and also Amusing Ourselves to Death: Neil Postman. Very persuasive regarding the dangers of television!

No Fear Growing Up In A Risk Averse Society Tim Gill. A British writer and journalist who also advocates the importance of play and free time. Here he examines key issues with regard to children's safety; playground design and legislation, antisocial behaviour, bullying, child protection, fear of strangers and online risks. He exposes the contradictions inherent in current attitudes and policies and shows how risk averse behaviour ironically can damage and endanger childen's lives and argues that we need to strike a better balnce between protecting children from genuine threats and giving them rich and challenging opportunities through which to grow and learn.

Toxic Childhood, also Detoxing Childhood: Sue Palmer, a British writer and popular speaker on the education of young children, Sue is well-known as a specialist in literacy, especially the teaching of writing, however concern about children’s lifestyles led her to research and publish these best-selling book about modern life is damaging our children… and what we can do about it. 

Child development

How Babies Think: Alison Gopnik, Andrew Meltzoff, Patricia Kuhl. A fascinating and very readable book written by three leading child psychologists who have researched childrens' brain development and show how sophisticated the process of learning to talk and understand language at a very early age actually is.

Children's Minds: Margaret Donaldson This book clearly demonstrates the importance of interpersonal communication and relationships for thought language development

Bowlby and also Winnacott - important theories of attachment parenting.

Attachment

The first two below are both beautifully written and draw connections between attachment, and neurology, and explain very clearly how critical attachment is to overall development.
 
A General Theory of Love
By Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, & Richard Lannon
 
The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook
Dr Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz                        
  
Nurturing Natures: Attachment and Children's Emotional, Sociocultural and Brain Development
Graham Music
 
Ghosts from the Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence
Robin Karr-Morse
 
Magical Child by Joseph Chilton Pearce
 
Our Babies, Ourselves - How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent
Meredith Small
 
Attachment Parenting : Instinctive Care for Your Baby and Young Child 
Katie Allison Granju
 
The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff

Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby's Brain [Paperback]
Sue Gerhardt
 
The Science of Parenting by Margot Sunderland
 
Three in a Bed: The Benefits of Sleeping with Your Baby by Deborah Jackson
 
Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five
John Medina
 
Evolution's End by Joseph Chilton Pearce

"Why Kindness is Good for You" by Dr David Hamilton
 
www.brainsciencepodcast.com
 
www.naturalchild.org

Schooling

Deschooling Our Lives: Matt Hern. We are all responsible for our own learning. What happens when people reject the state school system? This book looks at a variety of models.

Dumbing Us Down: John Taylor Gatto, another American activist who is critical of compulsory schooling writes here about the negative aspects what he calls the the hidden curriculum.

The End Of Education Redefining the Value of School; Neil Postman again.  Here he says, perhaps controversially for us free schoolers, that educators need to have a purpose in mind, that  it is not enough to be open ended, that we must also care that they are competent in this society and he goes onto to suggest a deeper narrative important for children to engage in. Interesting to read.

Alternative schools, other's experiences.....Polly's recommendations

Real Education: Varieties of Freedom David Gribble - details eighteen different schools in eight different countries where respect for children is paramount. This book was the one book I kept coming back when I was in the early stages of setting up The Family School as it gave us many ideas for how our school might work and I read it over and over again until the pages fell out! Highly inspirational.

Worlds Apart also by David Gribble. This book compares and contrasts traditional and progressive schools citing prospectuses and pupils opinions in a simple but interesting way which is both thought provoking and powerful. More geared to secondary education than primary.

The Lives of Children, The Story of the First Street School George Dennison- one of my favourites.

Making it Up As We Go Along, The Story of the Albany Free School Chris Mercogliano. A very entertaining read and I encourage parents interested in their families joining The Family School to read it as it illustrates the issues that can arise in a school such as ours better than I can! I love this book. I especially love its title because this is what we have been doing every day at the Family School until now and probably will continue to do every day from now on too! And it is a good thing that we do as it keeps us alive and fresh and illustrates the nature of life long learning!

The Countersthorpe Experience: John Watts An account of an innovative 1970s comprehensive school where staff - pupil relationships were largely informal and open, where learning was largely autonomous and where management was democratic. 

The Creative School; Bob Jeffrey and Peter Woods. This shows how Coombes Primary School understood the importance of the environment, social interaction and of varied experiences for optimal learning.  It not only developed an individual, creative and activities oriented curriculum under the headship of Sue Humphries, and later Sue Rowe, but also embracing parents into school life by welcoming them into the classroom at any time to observe or assist. Whilst Coombes was probably more conventional than The Family School in many ways, their sense of extended family whereby staff, parents and children work together for the benefit of individuals and the whole group is very similar to our own.

The School I'd Like : Catherine Burke and Ian Grosvenor The Guardian newspaper ran a competition for children's ideas about the school they would like. This book contains many of these ideas and we tried to incorporate many of them in our vision for The Family School

If you know of any relevant books that are not listed above, please do let us know. All suggestions are gratefully received and we will make sure to buy secondhand copies and put them in the library at school for staff, volunteers and parents to borrow.