School Can Wait

Rating:
Summary: This books has the facts you need about early schooling
Review: If you have kids, or if you pay taxes that support schools, you need to read this book.

The Moores' thesis is that children aren't physically or emotionally ready for school until they are 10 to 12 years old. Emotionally, younger children (age 10 and below) need a loving, permanent relationship with a few persons. This is a perfect description of the relationship between parents and child. Sending the young child off to school gives the child the opposite of that: at school the child gets superficial relationships with many people. The result is that the child loses the sense of security he needs, forms unsatisfactory bonds with other children, and may never form the essential bond with his parents. Physically, children's brains are simply not ready for many of the demands of school before age 10 to 12, so the years spent in school are wasted academically. The gains that the children make during those early years in school could be made in a year or two starting at a later age, with fewer negative consequences.

Homeschooling parents don't have to worry about the emotional affects of typical homechooling practice, but we do have to worry about trying to push academics too early. This book shows us that it is possible to push too much, too early, and that the harm we do could outweigh the good. It's not all gloom; I think that it can also show us how to push our kids as fast as they should go, and no faster.

The Moores present an impressive and convincing mass of research from the fields of optometry, neurophysiology, sociology and education to support their thesis. The bibliography has over 700 entries, mostly peer-reviewed research. The Moores contribution with this book has been to tie together research threads from several disciplines, and make it accessible to parents, while still making it useful to scholars.