Progressive-minded parents considering homeschooling their children but turned off by fundamentalist or unschooling approaches will be inspired by this engaging account of home-directed community-based education. Acting on their conviction that to educate a child well is to enable her to find her destiny, David Albert and his partner Ellen listened carefully, with respect and with love, to how their children expressed their own learning needs. Leaving traditional homeschooling methods behind, they followed their daughters' unique knowledge quests - from astronomy and botany, to opera and mythology - and then went about finding the resources and opportunities to meet those needs within their community. And the Skylark Sings with Me is reassuring to any parent who feels they must have an education background before homeschooling their children.

While Albert pays special attention to science and nature - the subjects parents feel the most inadequately prepared to teach - he humbly admits that despite a fancy education, his knowledge areas rarely overlapped his daughters' evolving interests. The real challenge is not to teach, but to find new ways to access the community - its people, its resources - as a flexible learning institution. Gracefully written, And the Skylark Sings with Me passionately illustrates that real learning is much richer and more mysterious than any school can encompass.