Customer Reviews

Homeschooling for Excellence

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When I bought "Hard Times in Paradise" and "Homeschooling For Excellence" in 1988, I was pregnant with my only child. I did not think that a federally controlled, compulsory education was healthy, nor did I think that small children should be removed from their parents' care at such an early age. I was hungry for information that would give me a perspective on what to expect. David and Micki Colfax have done a wonderful job of explaining the hits and misses that comprised the raising of their children outside of the standard educational systems. The long term successes of their sons are enough to inspire any parent. Also, the landscape of their homestead is a wonderful backdrop to their lives. I can't recommend their books enough.

Ok I admit we are friends of the Colfax family even if we have STANFORD as our university of choice. The one thing about their book which other books fail to share is the whole lifestyle issue. Since home schooling is a lifestyle choice and not just an educational choice. David it should also be noted ran and was elected to their local school board so this is an added plus since they are not writing a book about how evil public education is, but more an issue of poor educational choices overall.

They write about how they used their California homestead as a teaching tool. And in this day and age of the need (or so it seems) for electrical gadgets galore, they write about teaching their sons valuable life issues, like working and saving for the future. They built their home from the ground up, and a few years later they boys strung the power lines from the road on up to the house, which not only taught the boys valuable construction skills but also issues dealing with money and saving expenses.

They raised their own food, and over time they also started raising goats and other livestock. It used to make me so mad when Grant was accepted to Harvard when I would read about the "Goat Boy" at Harvard as if he was some mountain hermit discovering the big city. He went on to graduate Harvard and them medical school, as well as becoming a Fullbright Scholar to New Zealand.

Another excellent point the books shares is that environment does play a MAJOR role in a childs life and ability to succeed. Two of the sons are adopted, and are minority race, and yet they soared as high as the other sons. I even hate mentioning the adoption and race issue, but do so only because the book PROVES that any child can succeed and that home schooling is not just a wonder bread middle class ideal.

The books also addresses what I feel at very important issues like the heavy subjects i.e. math and sciences. While also pointing out that home schoolers MUST be challenged to take hard subjects. That local science groups and junior colleges welcome home schoolers as they do anybody who is SERIOUS about learning new ideas. Junior colleges also encourage home schoolers to enroll to further test their grey matter, and help prepare for a four year college. The books speaks to the whole issue of testing and being as well prepared as possible.

This is a MUST own book for ANY home schooler who is serious about ACADEMIC excellence. Which should be #1.

We put to use the same reading program they had mentioned in their book. It has been such a blessing to see my children beg me every day to do their school work. We had previously use Hooked-on-Phonics, a disaster. The children hated it, as did I and my husband. It was so awful.

"Homeschooling For Excellence" has been such a help. I never realized that children could love to learn as much as they do!

Don't just read this book. Take their advise! The difference it has made in our lives is amazing and wonderful!

To the authors: Thank you so much.

When we were trying to decide whether to homeschool our children or not, this book pushed us over the edge into the exciting adventure of home education. The authors' comments and insights about the state of modern public education were eye-opening. The gentle hands-on approach to education they used with their boys enabled their children to attend Harvard University! This is a great book to lend to your skeptical friends and relatives when they start questioning whether homeschooled children will be adequately prepared to function fully in college, the work world, and society at large. Does homeschooling REALLY work? You bet it does! And the Colfax's show you how....

I very much enjoyed reading this book. I didn't look at it so much as a how-to book but more of an inspirational book for anyone homeschooling or thinking of homeschooling. The authors don't tell you want to do - they just relate what they did, why they did it, and how it worked.

I loved many of the ideas they presented and we have already put one into practice - the idea of having the children write daily in a journal - or even just draw if they can't write yet. This is a big hit with our six year old who every night writes in her book something special that happened that day. What a fun way to learn writing, spelling and grammar skills and we'll be able to look back in later months and years and see how she has progressed.

Even though this book is dated - most of the information and processes are very relevant to today.

This book was highly recommended to me. I read it, took my child out of a prestigious private school, left my successful career and started homeschooling.

4 years later I can only say it was a wise decision. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in homeschooling AND anyone who cares about what happens to their children.

The Colfaxes are the homeschool movement's Poster Children. Back in the '70's and '80's they homeschooled their four children who went on to Ivy League colleges. This is not a how-to book, although there are some curriculum ideas laced through it. It is a journal of how the Colfaxes unconventionally educated their sons back when almost everyone else used the public schools. One point that sticks out in my mind from this book. The Colfax boys worked hard physically building their ranch. That may have been the silver bullet that made their program so successful.

This was the first book about homeschooling I read and all the rest have been disconcerting in comparison.

The Colfaxes present, in matter of fact fasion, how they taught their own. Their motivation for doing so was practical rather than ideological. They don't pretend to tell you how to teach your own children - just how they managed to teach theirs.

The only drawback is that some of the references are out of date - the Colfaxes taught their children in the 70's and 80's. However good sense (I don't say common, because I don't believe it is) will lead interested readers to updated references: Enyclopedias on CD-Rom rather than in book form, for example.

A great book for intelligent parents who suspect that they can teach their child(ren) more effectively than any overworked and underappreciated teacher can.

This book has got to be the best introduction to homeschooling for reasons other than religious education that is on the market. It's short length makes it ideal. Glad to see it is not a "how to" book but a "why to" book. When family and friends ask me why I keep my daughter home, I hand them this book.

I am a homeschooling parent and I've read many books on homeschooling and overall was disappointed in this book.

The book is small in size and 142 pages, with large font and good-sized margins. Twenty pages are comprised of lists of books and resources they like. Many of the references are from the 1970s and 1980s, since those were the times they were homeschooling their older children. I wonder how many of these books are out of print and also wonder if better books have been published since. Also these materials are simply in a list format and don't contain any opinions about why they liked that book, what the book is about, etc.

The beginning was a bit confusing to me as they go back and forth in time explaining their life experience. It jumped around from homeschooling to before they had children, and to when their children were in school. It would have been much better if they just started at the beginning in a chronological order.

A chapter on why the government education system in England and America doesn't work is a good introduction to these subjects. Both Colfax's were teachers prior to having children. The Colfax's seem to have firm opinions against government schools yet sent their children there and didn't homeschool until they moved to a rural area and had no other choice. I was surprised that they didn't homeschool from the beginning, it seemed a bit illogical to me to send your child to school when they worked in schools and didn't like what they knew of it. Also they stated they moved to a homestead area with no near school and only after moving did they realize they never considered the education issue for their children. How can someone never think about that? Doesn't every parent think about education issues, school quality, etc. before moving? Homeschooling is explained as a necessary step due to their living situation in a rural area.

The sections where they explain "how they did it" were very skimpy. Reading gets two pages and math gets three pages. My interest in this book is to hear how a family who homeschooled did it, given that three of their four children attended Harvard.

I enjoyed the theme of getting back to the land and simplifying their lives, with the cute photos of their children working at their farm, however this is the stereotype that some of us homeschoolers are shunning: that homeschoolers all live in rural areas with no school nearby and are part of a hippie back to the land movement.

No mention was made of how their fourth son "turned out". I was curious about that.

In a positive light I was happy to hear their philosophy was basically unschooling but making sure the three R's were covered. A strong sense of family values and helping their family create their homestead in a teamwork atmosphere are accomplishments to be admired. The last chapter is written by a child about his experience in school and explains why school is not a good fit for him and his life-it is excellent and almost worth buying the book for in and of itself.

In the end I would say that since this is a fast and easy read, beginning homeschoolers or the homeschooling curious would love this book. It is also a great book to give to relatives to convince them that homeschooling is great and everything will turn out fine for their grandchildren.

For more in depth discussions on school issues, unschooling, or more details about "how people do it", further reading is necessary. Some suggestions are the excellent ... which is full of reviews and detailed summaries of thousands of books and reference materials and written by a mostly-unschooling family-it lets you pick out what you think will be best for your family.