The Tuttle Twins and the Education Vacation (Tuttle Twi… (2024)

This was a good story showing the problems of compulsory government run schools and their impact on society. It also gives a look at how people/children can learn without being “in school.” While I’m not sure I completely agree with the ending of how the twins were taught, I do know that is how some families approach learning and it wasn't a big deal.
A book that might be good for parents and children to read and discuss together.

Yes yes yes! I love this. This scratches the surface on some of the reasons we homeschool.

Yes!!! & these are the books that should be handed out to our youth for family story times.

As someone who is open-minded and enjoys children's books, I am reading some of these conservative(?)/libertarian(?) "propaganda" books aimed at children.

I find it funny how this book involves the Turtle family going to hear a real-life author speak about his real-life book about how the American education system is bad.

Mr. Tuttle has to travel for work, and he wants the rest of the family to come along, but oh no! The kids will have to miss school! Then they go to hear this author (who won a teaching award) speak about how school treats all the kids the same and doesn't let them explore their special interests. Somehow this convinces the family to start homeschooling so they won't get in trouble for their kids missing school??? (Surely kids miss school for various reasons all the time without getting into trouble?) The family has a great time in Europe (except a police officer in Germany gets suspicious of them because the kids aren't in school?!) and continues to homeschool once they get home. The end.

This seems like one of those books aimed at parents moreso than kids. I really doubt some child is going to get their hands on this book and use it to convince their parents that homeschooling is the way to go. I'm not even against homeschooling! This book just sets up a weird dichotomy about how your kids will somehow become slaves to the government if they go to "regular" school (there's not even any nuance about whether public vs. private schools make a difference, how different schools might teach differently, etc.). It also does not take into account that kids can read books, do after-school activities, etc. to explore their special interests. It's not like they're in school 24 hours a day!

My kids enjoy these books and I like the Libertarian ideas they teach. Some people criticize them, saying they’re propaganda but isn’t most of parenting spent trying to propagandize our kids to our world views?

This book talks about John Taylor Gatto and his ideas about the problems with compulsory schooling. If you aren’t homeschooling you might not enjoy this one as much.

A parent's review: Strongly recommended

Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2020

In this case, the authors break with the formula that they used for the last nine books, which is to write a children's book of a libertarian classic.

John Taylor Gatto is obviously not on the level of someone like Rothbard or Hayek.

But, there are a lot of good questions for thought here:

1. Is traditional education the best choice for everyone? (Not everybody needs to go to college prep school, and in fact too many children are being sent to college while vocational skills go crying for workers. Marty Nemko.)

2. Do schools provide a service, or is it more like children only need to exist so that they can have a job? (Kevin Williamson.)

This is a simple little read, it occurs to me to ask: Why didn't somebody think of this before?

A lot of times when people want to inculcate someone with a political agenda, the first place that they go is to schools so that they can catch children when they are young.

Why can't sauce for the goose be sauce for the gander?

The environmentalists have been doing this for a long time. (Think of how often you watch a cartoon where bad people are shown to be polluters, who are not polluting as a side effect of some productive economic activity. But, just doing it because they are "bad.")

And don't even get me started on the Gender Identity Disorder Self-Diagnosis Movement. ("Drag Queen Story Hours" all over the place. And I remember WAY fewer people with Gender Identity Disorder than when I was in Middle School and high school.)

If you have a worldview that you would like to impart to your kids, better that you catch them young and take the responsibility for their education.

The Libertarian world view has some number of parts, and this is a substantial one. (The state's provision of standardized cookie cutter education is not focused on the individual.)

The illustrations are great, and my sons liked them a lot.

Verdict: Strongly recommended

How would you star rate this book (from 1 to 5) and why?
5 = I loved the book.
Because it's fun to read and it's interesting.
How highly do you recommend others to read this book, and why? 4 / 5 Because I think it's fun to read and interesting but I think some people wouldn't like it.
To what kind of people would you recommend this book, and why? To kids from 7+ because it has some complicated words to read.
In 4 sentences or more, give a brief description of the book's story. It's about some kids that are in summer but then they go receive a speech by a man called Mr. Gatto that talked about compulsory education. Then they go to Europe to meet different places. They went to London UK, Paris France, Rome Italy, Greece, and Sweden. Then they come back to their house in the USA.
Did this book change you? If so, how? If not, why not? It changed me by thinking of how lucky we are of having AAG as our school.

The TT books were going downhill for us until we got to this one. As a homeschooling family, we had a great discussion about the ideas presented here. It was fun for me, too, since I have read some of John Taylor Gatto's work, and the ideas presented here are based on his writing and speaking. It was certainly a "preaching to the choir" type of message for us, but still underscored many of the reasons we have embraced home education. If only we could take a weeks-long European tour like the Tuttle family in the book!

This book feels heavy like propaganda. It could have had a more subtle way to pass the message against compulsory education in schools. It doesn't reach deep about home schooling, just the children traveling and learning about other countries' history, and it mentions online learning.
Also there are some subjects that even if children don't like or care about them, a minimum must be required.

Well, at least they aren't breaking the law in this one. Still the naiveté on display here is staggering. I'm checking out the books written by this disgruntled teacher to see what they have to say. But this entitled piece of garbage masquerading as a story is just kinda gross. I'm not going to read any more of these, they are just making me progressively more disgusted.

I realize not everyone agrees with the principles in the TT books, but this one about education has in particular played out as described (at least for 1 or 2 of my kids). Their joy of learning and the lights that are curiosity and creativity went out due to a system that feels broken in many ways. I’m currently reading John Gatto’s books. I think they’re fascinating!

I love this! We will be starting homeschool this fall pulling out my rising 4th grader from a public school. I have a rising kindergartner too who’s eager to start Math at home! I just finished Dumbing Us Down the other day and got excited when the author appeared in the story as a character. I can’t wait to share this story with my kids.

The latest installment of the Tuttle Twins series did not disappoint! We also listened to the audio version of John Taylor Gatto's "The Underground History of American Education." We will be revisiting both books at a later

Maybe this would be more appealing to someone who hadn't already been convinced and who wasn't aware of Gatto and the arguments against compulsory public education. It was fine, but merely scratched the surface of this immense topic.

We are using these books for homeschool and I am reading them aloud and we are discussing them! This book was really cool to hear about a famous public school teacher who won awards and then quit. Lots of reasons to think about eduction differently when to consider homeschool!

Excellent book about the problems with a state sponsored education system that tends more toward propaganda and trying to make children into controllable, submissive subjects instead of educated human beings. The book also talks about how our system of education "kills" learning in our kids.

Good story. Challenge for mass education is tailoring learning for the individual that is still efficient and covers a basic knowledge set. History is filled with stories of kids with private tutors. Teaching in a classroom format is not always ideal.

This is so good! Tuttle Twins Education Vacation introduces us to John Taylor Gatto who quit teaching kids to teach everyone about the roots of our American education system. He encourages families to educate their kids in a more personalized manner than core curriculum and standardized grading.

This is a series for libertarian families. The book discusses the cons of compulsory education, suggesting that the main reason for it is to mold children to be submissive to the state. Good for family discussions!

The writing is so simple, twaddly. However JTG and our country’s education system is a great topic.

Can’t wait for my kids to read it!

This book gives valid reasons why compulsory education is not the best system for children and why homeschooling is a better option. Great read.

I liked it because I learned about stupid school and how homeschooling is better.

Really loved this one as it talks about homeschooling and seems to take ideas from Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy!

i loved how interesting it was and it can teach you a great lesson

This one encourages kids to think more for themselves, not let the education system turn them into mindless automotons.

Very good book, bring a new light to educating our children.

Possibly my favorite of the Tuttle Twins series.

Read aloud for the kids. Will definitely purchase more Tuttle Twins books.