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Grace Llewellyn

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The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education Paperback – Sept. 1 1998

by Grace Llewellyn (Author)

4.5 147 ratings

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Explores how teenagers can leave school and design a personalized education program for themselves

Print length

435 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Lowry House Pub
Publication date

Sept. 1 1998
Grade level

10 - 12
Dimensions

15.24 x 2.54 x 23.5 cm
ISBN-10

0962959170
ISBN-13

978-0962959172
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Product description

From Amazon

You won't find this book on a school library shelf--it's pure teenage anarchy. While many homeschooling authors hem and haw that learning at home isn't for everyone, this manifesto practically tells kids they're losers if they do otherwise. With the exception of a forwarding note to parents, this book is written entirely for teenagers, and the first 75 pages explain why school is a waste of time. Grace Llewellyn insists that people learn better when they are self-motivated and not confined by school walls. Instead of homeschooling, which connotes setting up a school at home, Llewellyn prefers "unschooling," a learning method with no structure or formal curriculum. There are tips here you won't hear from a school guidance counselor. Llewellyn urges kids to take a vacation--at least for a week--after quitting school to purge its influence. "Throw darts at a picture of your school" or "Make a bonfire of old worksheets," she advises. She spends an entire chapter on the gentle art of persuading parents that this is a good idea. Then she gets serious. Llewellyn urges teens to turn off the TV, get outside, and turn to their local libraries, museums, the Internet, and other resources for information. She devotes many chapters to books and suggestions for teaching yourself science, math, social sciences, English, foreign languages, and the arts. She also includes advice on jobs and getting into college, assuring teens that, contrary to what they've been told in school, they won't be flipping burgers for the rest of their days if they drop out.

Llewellyn is a former middle-school English teacher, and she knows her audience well. Her formula for making the transition from traditional school to unschooling is accompanied by quotes on freedom and free thought from radical thinkers such as Steve Biko and Ralph Waldo Emerson. And Llewellyn is not above using slang. She capitalizes words to add emphasis, as in the "Mainstream American Suburbia-Think" she blames most schools for perpetuating. Some of her attempts to appeal to young minds ring a bit corny. She weaves through several chapters an allegory about a baby whose enthusiasm is squashed by a sterile, unnatural environment, and tells readers to "learn to be a human bean and not a mashed potato." But her underlying theme--think for yourself--should appeal to many teenagers. --Jodi Mailander Farrell

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Lowry House Pub; Revised, Expanded edition (Sept. 1 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 435 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0962959170
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0962959172
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 612 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 2.54 x 23.5 cm

Best Sellers Rank: #992,133 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #46,393 in Teen & Young Adult (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.5 147 ratings

About the author

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Grace Llewellyn

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Grace Llewellyn taught school for three years before leaving and writing The Teenage Liberation Handbook, which was first published in 1991. In 1996 she founded Not Back to School Camp, a gathering for unschooled teenagers, which continues to bring joy, inspiration, community, and interesting challenges to her life. Along the way there’ve been three other books, two self-directed education centers—and plentiful failures, surprises, mistakes, mysteries, adventures, and life lessons. Grace loves every kind of dance, especially Argentine tango. She lives in Eugene, Oregon with her favorite son and their timid cat.

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Amazon Customer

Set me free...

Reviewed in Canada on September 5, 2022

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This book set me free! I am now an elderly gentleman who did many of the things discussed in this book, but who was never sure that I didn't miss something, a real education. Reading this book confirmed that what I did was not foolish, but needful, at least for me. Education is not formal (although there is sometimes a need) it is life lived and experienced with a great deal of common sense which I believe God handed out liberally. By the way, I went on to eventually own my own business, did OK, the ideas in this book really do work; even after all of these years...

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Amazon Customer

The Teenage Liberation Handbook (TLH)

Reviewed in Canada on October 24, 2003

This book changed my life.
When I was thirteen, bored with school, I was given this book. It took me one long hard summer to convince my parents to let me unschool, but I did. I haven't looked back since.
When I read this book, my immediate thought is: "I am the luckiest teenager in the world to be given this book." I loved myself, my life, and I was so happy I was leaving. It also made me angry that I hadn't left school earlier, that I'd been tricked by everyone.
I know, I know. You're all wondering about social concerns, right? Well I go to school and have lunch with my friends once a week. I also occasionally stay after school with friends and watch football games or sports. I am involved in the school's after school activities and am considering joining our high school's choir. Just because you're leaving school doesn't mean you leave all of it's benefits! You recieve the best parts of both worlds!
However, unschooling is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I love it. I've learned so much more than school ever taught me, as much about life as about academics. If I don't do my "work," I don't just get a bad grade and forget about it. It still needs to be done, and I've learned to just do it.
In response to what another viewer said (It's harder to look in the library for something to give yourself in education--in school everything is laid out) I agree with that. It's true. I've learned how to look through a library and find that. I've learned to ask the librarians, my parents, and former teaches for suggestions. I've learned how to find things on my own. Also, someone mentioned that Grace "glossed over" things, and I'd like to say that I believe the reason she did that was because each state/country is different about how it deals with unschoolers.
I've been unschooling for a year now, and I love it. I've never been happier, and my only regret is that many of my friends go to school and we can't do much together during the day.
Unschooling is hard, but it's the best thing that has ever happened to me. TLH should be required reading.

3 people found this helpful

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Holly Rose

Great book (one warning though)

Reviewed in Canada on May 24, 2004

This book is excellent. I sometimes wish it had a different name because a lot of people can benefit from it other than teenagers. I am a homeschooling mom of young children but I still got a lot out of it. Her philosophy is basically that you don't need a curriculum to learn. I agree with this. I liked her idea that you can still spend 4 hours a day doing "school work" but you do what YOU want to do instead of what someone assigns you. You do self directed learning. I have found that a solid math and grammar program is all you really need. In the end the SAT and GRE only tests you on your verbal/math skills anyway. Why waste time learning all kinds of subjects in the order some adult tells you to? The only subjects worth studying in a regimented manner in my opinion are math and grammar. Aside from that you should follow your interests. Now the author is a bit extreme in her views so I find you have to temper it with your own good judgement.
The warning is that she actually endorses experimenting with drugs. Pretty scary but she does. I find this very irresponsible of her. Fortunately I was able to work around that and read the rest of the book. You just have to realize she's a bit of an extremist so you have to just take what you learn from it and let the rest go.

5 people found this helpful

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Lijhe

an important, engaging work

Reviewed in Canada on August 22, 2003

There are no doubt going to be a lot of people threatened by what Grace Llewellyn has to say, because a lot of people have their entire identities and lives invested in believing that our school system fosters true learning and the confidence and self-knowledge necessary to creat a satisfying, fulfilling life. It quite frankly does nothing of the sort, and Llewellyn is very good at logically spelling out for us exactly why this is so.
Like Llewellyn, I attended compulsory school, was a good student, and went through college (a professional school) in preparation for a career, and also like her I now see the terrible limitations inherent in our school system. Had I had the opportunity of different and more choices, I could have avoided a lot of the tedium, mediocrity, and loss of freedom that such an educational path demanded, even had I eventually *chosen* to educate myself in a traditional way. As well, I have spent the last decade of my life unlearning bad habits that are directly a result of being coerced for years into doing things that are irrelevant to my life, and being subject to arbitrary authorities. Those things crowded out my spirit and my voice until I forgot I had them or how to use them. I am now remembering how, and books like Llewellyn's have been invaluable to me in doing so.
"It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiousity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty." -- Albert Einstein...

3 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Ritu Bhattacharya

Five Stars

Reviewed in India on February 7, 2017

Verified Purchase

Great book, in decent condition

Jeannette

Give this book to every school kid you know...all they have to lose is boredom.

Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2007

Verified Purchase

The most essential principles that school children learn from regimented institutionalized schooling are 1.) that they are incapable of teaching and directing themselves 2.) that their time does not belong to them and 3.) that hatred of the unbearable present is a natural part of human existence.

This conditioning follows most of us into our adult lives, as we exchange one domineering form of authority for yet another and never learn intellectual/mental independence. We enter the workplace to sell our time to bosses and fulfill alienating, drone-like work positions, without ever really figuring out what is important to us or fully understanding the vital concept of self-direction.

The spoon-feed cycle spills over into all aspects of our lives, as we look to media talking head "specialists" and "experts" to tell us what we should know and point us to information they deem important.

Worst of all, we are constantly living for the promise of a utopian future that never arrives. School children are waiting for recess, the 3 o'clock bell and summer, while adults are waiting for lunch, the 5 o'lock hour and vacation. Our lives basically become an abstract mosaic of past and future. The present loses all meaning and becomes irrelevant, yet the idea that present misery is necessary for future happiness/comfort has been driven into our psyche since the day we entered the schooling regiment.

Llewellyn passionately encourages kids to cast off these lies and take their minds and futures into their own hands, rather than buying into the empty abstractions and false promises of a institutionalized education system that kills off innate human spontaneous curiosity and love of learning.

I won't reiterate what other reviewers have stated, but my favorite part about this book is Llewellyn's argument that true learning/intellect is born out of lived experience, not regurgitated facts memorized sans meaningful context and later forgotten. She shatters a slew of myths associated with institutionalized schooling, particularly the idea that the school setting provides a child with "friends." (Any meaningful friendships that occur within the age-segregated, institutionalized school environment truly occur accidentally, despite school authorities' best efforts to prevent "unauthorized" interaction!) Or that conventional schooling is a prerequisite for college and a "good job" later on in life. None of these myths bear a spark of truth, but what they are designed to do is prevent children from harnessing their unique potential as individuals and realizing the world of possibility that exists outside of the four walls of One-Size-Fits-All Junior High. And if they starting thinking along these lines, who knows where such radical thinking might lead?

Give this book to every school kid you know. At the very least, it might provoke a shift of consciousness that just might save their intellectual life during their time in the schooling machine.

50 people found this helpful

Veronika Sophia Robinson

Home Education ~ the way of the future

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 25, 2010

Verified Purchase

As the author of Life Without School: the quiet revolution, I was thrilled to come across this genius book. It should be required reading, not just for teens, but for parents, teachers and every human in western society. We need to wake up to the impact 'education' in institutions is having on us as a species. This book has so many useful resources. I really can't recommend it enough. Simply brilliant. I'm giving this to all my friends who want to take the leap into unschooling.

11 people found this helpful

Dave Preston

This book has something for everyone!

Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2023

Verified Purchase

This book is a valuable resource for teenagers who yearn for a more individualized and self-directed approach to education. Grace Llewelyn's unwavering belief in the capabilities of young learners and her emphasis on personal autonomy make this book an empowering read.

Miriam

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 3, 2015

Verified Purchase

This is truly a liberating book ;) Will hopefully be reading it again with my daughter soon.

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The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education Paperback – Sept. 1 1998

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