“I believe that even if people never actually homeschool, they can benefit from homeschooling’s ideas – its way of looking at learning. Here’s one example: if you view education as something that has to be given to you by other people, then if the education handed out in your school isn’t of great quality, you will understandably feel you are getting the short end of the stick. If, on the other hand, you start to realize that learning is something you can find and create for yourself, then your whole way of looking at what’s available changes.”
Susannah Sheffer was a longtime editor of the now-defunct magazine Growing Without Schooling. As a teen, she became engrossed in the work of John Holt and began writing to him on the subject of education. She later joined Holt and Associates and edited the magazine that helped thousands of families embrace non-traditional learning. Growing Without Schooling ran from 1977 to 2001 and had subscribers from many countries including the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia.
Susannah Sheffer has also edited and written several books about learning including A Life Worth Living: Selected Letters of John Holt, Writing Because We Love to: Homeschoolers at Work, and A Sense of Self: Listening to Homeschooled Adolescent Girls.
Susannah Sheffer’s Educational Philosophy
Susannah Sheffer embraced many of the philosophies held by her mentor John Holt. Her own writings and interviews tend to focus on these two themes:
- The homeschooling movement empowers people of all ages to take control of their own learning.
- Adolescent girls, in particular, benefit from the freedom of learning without schools. [click to continue…]
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