Rational Education
As a mom who can't afford private schools and is horrified by the current state of public education in my country (USA), I'm keenly interested in rational homeschool curriculum ideas--both explicitly teaching rationality itself, and also teaching specific subjects in a rational way. Teaching the skills necessary for self-education might be a third topic.
I was homeschooled - I should ask my mom about resources she used. It is worth noting that the three of us siblings all became readers, and she provided us with good textbooks to work from. I taught myself algebra and geometry out of a geometry textbook she bought, for instance.
(I think I saw a copy of John Holt's How Children Fail around the house once, to name an author who appeared in a few Rationalty Quotes threads, but I really don't know if that was a significant part of my parents' thinking.)
Less Wrong is a large community of very smart people with a wide spectrum of expertise, and I think relatively little of that value has been tapped.
Like my post The Best Textbooks on Every Subject, this is meant to be a community-driven post. The first goal is to identify topics the Less Wrong community would like to read more about. The second goal is to encourage Less Wrongers to write on those topics. (Respecting, of course, the implicit and fuzzy guidelines for what should be posted to Less Wrong.)
One problem is that those with expertise on a subject don't necessarily feel competent to write a front-page post on it. If that's the case, please comment here explaining that you might be able to write one of the requested posts, but you'd like a writing collaborator. We'll try to find you one.
Rules
You may either:
or...
I will regularly update the list of suggested Less Wrong posts, ranking them in descending order of votes (like this).
The List So Far (updated 02/11/11)