Best book-length defense of the superiority of homeschooling?

[Geremia]

Could someone here please recommend a good book defending the superiority of homeschooling over classroom schooling?

[Geremia]

[Catholic Home Schooling: A Handbook for Parents, an] out-of-print TAN book by Seton Homeschool director Dr. Mary Kay Clark.

Thomas Nelson's preface lists 8 advantages, pp. xvii-xx:

• "You do not waste the students' time."
• "You do not re-teach what the student already knows."
• "You can give your own children more individualized attention."
• "You can gear the work to a pace your children can handle and that will keep them interested."
• "You can (and should) eliminate the option to fail!"
• "You can build in automatic consequences for failure to perform."
• "You can emphasize reading."
• "Home schooling eliminates the silliness and nonsense picked up from peers."

Dr. Clark's ch. 1 (pp. 1-22) argues homeschooling's advantages:

• no sex-ed (indoctrination into homosexuality; cf. Fr. John F. O'Connor, O.P., "The State of [']Catholic['] Education," who told parents not to send their children to "Catholic" schools)
• character formation
• academics
• public (& "Catholic") schools "the training camps of the enemies of Jesus Christ and His Church." (p. 9)
• raising "cradle Catholics"
• benefits for the
  
  • student: socialization
  • mother
  • father
  • family
  • community
  • Church
  • nation

[LausTibiChriste]

Dr Gordon Neufeld is a big proponent of homeschooling (he comes at it from a clinical psychologist point of view rather than a Catholic viewpoint...but it jives with a lot of Catholic reasoning)

His book Hold On To Your Kids is pretty good, only read half though. It basically argues that peers (especially at school) raise each other now, rather than the parents. My wife was telling me about one study that was done and kids who go to school with parents who work spend an average of 18 minutes a day talking with/spending time with their parents. That's nuts...I have to spend 18 minutes upon waking up talking to my son about the Saturn V rocket before he'll even consider getting out of bed to eat breakfast lol.

My wife wasn't much for homeschooling then dove into Dr. Neufeld's stuff and now we've actively canceled plans to move to certain countries because they don't allow homeschooling (Germany & France being two).

[diaduit]

Another advantage and I've seen this in my home and I'm only doing this for 3 years....kids will tuck into their work without having to be pushed or cajoled.  If I was sick in bed, my two youngest will pull out their core work and carry on.  Core being English, Irish, Maths, Reading, Spelling and they know to say their prayers beforehand.
Another one, picking up subjects to learn off their own bat.  My 12 year old is learning sign language and Spanish totally off his own doing.

I didn't think this would ever happen.

[The Curt Jester]

Another advantage and I've seen this in my home and I'm only doing this for 3 years....kids will tuck into their work without having to be pushed or cajoled.  If I was sick in bed, my two youngest will pull out their core work and carry on.  Core being English, Irish, Maths, Reading, Spelling and they know to say their prayers beforehand.
Another one, picking up subjects to learn off their own bat.  My 12 year old is learning sign language and Spanish totally off his own doing.

I didn't think this would ever happen.

Depends on the child.

My siblings would have done that.  I would have started and then taken a break every 15 minutes.

[Geremia]

kids who go to school with parents who work spend an average of 18 minutes a day talking with/spending time with their parents

Yes, this is Nelson's point #1:

In a junior or senior high school setting, about one hour 40 minutes per day are spent among a) home room b) traveling between classes and c) getting ready to leave class and settling down in the new class. Added to this, between one-half hour and one hour, average, are spent going to and coming from school. This amounts to more than two hours wasted during the day, not to mention classroom time ill-spent, wasted by an unprepared or poor teacher or waiting for unprepared and/or poor students to respond or be dealt with by the teacher.

Perhaps the only good thing it does is make the schoolchildren practice patience...

[diaduit]

I would say it is instilling 'you must obey the rules' like good commies.

[Geremia]

I would say it is instilling 'you must obey the rules' like good commies.

Obedience isn't communist.

[LausTibiChriste]

I would say it is instilling 'you must obey the rules' like good commies.

Obedience isn't communist.

It is when you're being sent to public schools

[Geremia]

It is when you're being sent to public schools

True, like Pope Pius XI wrote, Divini Illius Magistri §73, students in such schools are:

deformed and depraved) in godless schools and associations, to irreligion and hatred, according to the theories of advanced socialism; and thus is renewed in a real and more terrible manner the slaughter of the Innocents.

[diaduit]

I would say it is instilling 'you must obey the rules' like good commies.

Obedience isn't communist.

You know what I mean, the jack boot State obedience.