2 May 2005
Books that influenced
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Books; Education .
I am looking back at early influences that might have moved me towards my current understanding of schooling and education. Back when I was a secondary student – maybe 16 or 17, I had two pretty progressive teachers: Mr Lee taught English, while Miss Pillai taught literature.
Miss Pillai was strident in her political views and occasionally ran into trouble with the authorities, but she made us understand that literature wasn’t just words and stories, but ideas that shaped society.
Mr Lee who was more laidback, lent me books. Like Herbert Kohl’s 36 Children, John Holt’s How Children Learn, and Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society. Lee and Pillay were a couple who shared a modest apartment not far from the school they taught in.
Those paperbacks packed a wallop. I don’t think I understood fully what these authors were saying, much less grasped how radical these books were then in the mid-70s. I don’t think I understood how influential these men’s ideas were -not knowing any better – but I was utterly sold on their arguments. They were questioning conventional wisdom about schools, how kids learn, how process and substance were two different things, and yep, they certainly made me ask the same questions although I couldn’t see how anyone could beat the system.
In some ways, you could say these early ideas made it easier for me to ‘deschool’ and homeschool my own kids when the time came. Since then there have been other books, but that’s a story for another time.
What early influences led you to homeschool?
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