Teenage Liberation Handbook

UnSchooling/DeSchooling book by Grace Llewelyn - ISBN:0962959170 http://gracellewellyn.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Teenage_Liberation_Handbook

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Llewellyn

Unusual in that it's addressed to teenagers who currently go to school. It's part throw-off-your-chains inspiration, part resource guide that makes the journey seem less intimidating by giving you a sense of control.

Many references to Barbara Sher's Wish Craft.

Bits I liked

• discussing the idea of a 2-phase "vacation" to adjust to the freedom of lacking a Curriculum and start learning-by-living. (DeSchooling)
• "how to become a Glorious Generalist"
• Science is one of the best reasons to quit school... School treats science all wrong. It usually allows no play and is afraid to ask you to do serious work... Russian, Chinese, and Japanese students generally do much better in science than Americans, and one likely reason for this is that they study all branches of science at once.
• An appropriately-inconclusive discussion about whether to aim for a College Education. Realize that while a college degree definitely makes many jobs easier to get, unschooling all the way through your life probably makes it easier for you to make a living out of the things you love. But then practical nuts-and-bolts advice about how to package yourself if you want to go that way.
• Lots of mentions of successful people who dropped out or completely lacked "formal education".

The big issue for me is how dated this book is. This is the 2nd edition, from 1998. It mentions some "hotlist pages" on the web as good resources, but has lots of mentions of typewriters and sending letters. While this might create some timeliness roadblocks for people (ordering books not available easily, etc.), it probably doesn't really matter all that much, since Digital Native-s can probably figure out how to Route Around that to achieve their goals.