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THE HOMESCHOOL RESOURCE PAGE

(This page is not nearly as complete as I would prefer it to be because this subject is SO important. But I've only so much time...)

 

Senator Phil Gramm, in a debate about education policy with a Dept. of Education bureaucrat:

 

Senator Gramm: "My philosophy on this matter is based on my belief that you don't care as much about my kids as I do."

 

Bureaucrat, with gentle remonstrative sincerity: "Senator, that's not true!"

 

Senator Gramm: "Oh? What are their names?"

Let's face it.  All public schools, and most charter and private schools, are infested with socialism-- as well as drugs, violence, moral relativism, and a dozen other pathologies.  Handing a child over to such a place amounts to abuse.

"A general state education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation. In proportion as it is efficient, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body."

-John Stuart Mill

Regarding The "Socialization" Canard

Intellectual Ammunition on Education

A Modest Proposal For A New Industrial Policy

Save the Children, Save the Future

Getting Education Reform Right

It's Your Money, Redux

The Full-Disservice Treatment

A lot of people who genuinely care about their children are nonetheless seduced into abandoning them to the schools because of the apparent cost to the family budget if one parent forgoes a job in order to homeschool.  However, learning the truth about the income tax will reveal that the sacrifice needn't be nearly as much of a problem as might be imagined.

 

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Educational Videos

 

Here's a sampling of educational videos available for the edification of both parent and child:

 

   

 

   

 

   

 

For more of these short videos, visit learnliberty.org/videos

 

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Resources we have used and appreciated:

the Saxon Math series saxonpub.com (K-12)

the Wordly Wise series from Educators Publishing Service 800-435-7728 (2-12)

Science In A Nutshell delta-education.com

Science Sleuths and Clue Finders, both at learningco.com

An elementary-level but entertaining math drill site can be found at mathschase.com

"My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself." 

- George Bernard Shaw

Reading Recommendations

FIRE, an organization dedicated to battling the PC problem in American universities

The Institute for Humane Studies

Hillsdale College

(They have a fabulous curriculum package available for K-12 homeschoolers)

 

"The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all: it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality."

-H. L. Mencken

 

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Reading Recommendations

Though the ages and reading levels at which some of the listed works may be best appreciated will vary, all of the following material should be consumed by the well-rounded student before the age of 18.  There are, of course, countless other wonderful works to be enjoyed in addition to these selections, which are chosen mainly on the basis of their support for a love and understanding of liberty, or to fill in gaps typical in a contemporary education.

Literature

Non-Fiction

Literature

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Animal Farm by George Orwell

1984 by George Orwell

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein

The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis

Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis

The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible by Ken Schoolland

Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

The Complete Works of Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophicles and Aristophanes

The Divine Comedy by Cervantes

The Lord Of The Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien

State of Fear by Michael Crichton

Next by Michael Crichton

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Weapon Shops Of Isher by A. E. Van Vogt

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose by Dr. Seuss

Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss

The Butter Battle Book by Dr. Seuss

Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss

Bartholomew and the Oobleck by Dr. Seuss

 

Non-Fiction

Cracking the Code by Peter E. Hendrickson

Upholding the Law by Peter E. Hendrickson

Was Grandpa Really a Moron? by Peter E. Hendrickson

The Worm In The Apple by Peter Brimelow

JFK and the Unspeakable by James W. Douglass

Whatever Happened To Justice by Richard J. Maybury

Whatever Happened To Penny-Candy by Richard J. Maybury

A Parliament of Whores by P. J. O'Rourke

The Rights Of Man by Tom Paine

The Real Lincoln by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Lincoln Unmasked by Thomas DiLorenzo

Human Accomplishment by Charles Murray

Democracy In America by Alexis DeToqueville

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt

Selected Essays On Political Economy by Frederick Bastiat

The Wealth Of Nations by Adam Smith

The Constitution Of Liberty by F. A. Hayek

The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto

The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant

Those Dirty Rotten Taxes by Charles Adams

Samuel Adams: America's Revolutionary Politician by John K. Alexander

Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations by Craig Nelson

The Day the Universe Changed by James Burke

The Pinball Effect by James Burke

For film recommendations, click here 

Thomas Jefferson's Recommended Reading List

History

The Histories by Herodotus

History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

 Anabasis & Hellenica by Xenophon

Life of Alexander the Great by Quintus Curtius Rufus

The Gallic War & The Civil War by Julius Caesar

Antiquities by Josephus

Lives by Plutarch

Annals & Histories by Tacitus

History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbons

Philosophy

Works of Plato by Plato

Works of Cicero by Cicero

Morals by Plutarch

Moral Epistles & Essays by Seneca

Memorabilia of Socrates by Xenophon

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

The Enchiridion by Epictetus

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by David Hume

Candide by Voltaire

Introductory Discourse and the Free Inquiry by Conyers Middleton

Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

Literature/Epic Poetry/Plays

The Iliad & The Odyssey by Homer

The Aeneid by Virgil

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles

Orestian Trilogy by Aeschylus

The Plays of Euripides by Euripides

Poems by Horace

The Works of Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

The Misanthrope by Moliere

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

The Adventures of David Simple by Sarah Fielding

The Adventures of Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett

The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith

Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Poems by Edmund Waller

Politics/Religion/Modern History

Spirit of the Laws by Montesquieu

Two Treatises of Government by John Locke

Discourses Concerning Government by Algernon Sidney

The Bible

The History of America by William Robertson

Historical Review of Pennsylvania by Benjamin Franklin

A History of the Settlement of Virginia by Captain John Smith

Science

On Electricity by Benjamin Franklin

The Gentleman Farmer by Henry Home

The Horse Hoeing Husbandry by Jethro Tull

Buffon’s Natural History by Georges-Louis Leclerc

Anson’s Voyage Round the World by Richard Walter