About Us

As an educator I have always wanted to write a book recommending the important books that everyone should read.  Now, as a father I am focusing on educating my child and this project has assumed even greater importance.  My belief, based on a fair amount of research on education is that the best education for a child involves the following components:

1.  Active engagement with adults (parents in particular)
2.  Hands-on tactile learning (let them explore, play, and touch)
3.  Audio input (talk to your child, read to them, play music for them)
4.  Reading (not textbooks but real books, good books, classics)

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The Browne Academy curriculum is designed to foster these four components.  To use the books in this curriculum and stress their importance to your child you need to read them yourself!  Reading them as a family promotes discussing them as a family which is the kind of active engagement in learning that will keep your child interested in learning and make them a successful learner.  
The recommended books are organized into classes but I use this term rather loosely.  I think children should be encouraged to be curious and pursue those interests where they lead but as the guide for your childs learning your job is to provide the context for their current and future learning.  That is what these classes do.  It is also a way to provide an organized framework for assessing your childs progress. 
  
To formalize the process of working through these classes I have developed a set of guidelines for completing a course.  A certain number of books should be read and while this is flexible you should work to provide your child with a good dose of the basics in two categories of reading: the current literature in a field and the classics.