Patrick Farenga has more than 36 years of fieldwork, advocacy, and personal experience helping parents and children learn in their own ways. He is a writer and education activist who addresses academic and general audiences about working with children, not on children, to help them learn. He and his wife unschooled their (now grown) three daughters.

Pat worked closely with one of the founders of the modern homeschooling movement, the late author and teacher John Holt. Together they published Growing Without Schooling magazine (GWS), the nation’s first periodical about learning without going to school, started by Holt in 1977 and published by Farenga until 2001.

Pat speaks as a homeschooling expert at education conferences around the world as well as on commercial radio and television talk shows in the United States (The Today Show, Good Morning America) and abroad. He also writes about homeschooling and Self-Directed Education, and operates the website Growing Without Schools.

Pat has written a number of books, including Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling, The Legacy of John Holt: A Man Who Genuinely Understood, Trusted, and Respected Children, and How to Report Unschooling to School Officials.

Specific areas of focus and expertise:

• Unschooling
• Children’s Rights
• Homeschooling rights
• SDE research and “proof”
• Personal stories
• John Holt (author)
• Self-Directed Education
• Self-taught people