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Summary: One of the most important books in homeschooling
Review: As a book reviewer with Home Education Magazine, I think this is one of the most important books ever written about homeschooling. When considering homeschooling, people want to know how homeschooling will impact their kids. The homeschooling movement is coming of age, and we finally have a body of graduates to look to for answers. The answers those graduates provide in this book will surprise and enlighten even seasoned homeschoolers.In reading this book, I was surprised again and again. The surprises come with the fresh realization of how fulfilling and unique the fruit of anyone's personal passions can be when they're not being run through a mill. The theme of this particular mind banquet was diversity and individuality in full bloom. The important message these graduates deliver is that homeschooling provided them with the opportunity to follow their own dreams and find their unique fulfillment and happiness in ways that might have been completely closed off to them otherwise. This book isn't about getting into an Ivy League college and getting a professional title that denotes success--this book is about the incredible processes people can go through to find their personal satisfaction and success in any number of imaginative ways, Ivy League education among them. You can't read these stories without stretching your mind and questioning a whole lot of cultural assumptions about what "success" is. You'll find more than just success stories, however; the book includes moving and intimate personal responses to questions about how homeschooling impacted their lives. The variety of successful people and stories in this book is amazing. There isn't a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker in the crowd, but there's a Broadway performer, a multi-millionaire internet entrepreneur, a firefighter--and a building contractor who sailed solo around the world in his teens, went to Stanford on a scholarship and quit because he didn't want to waste precious time in college. After reading Homeschoolers' Success Stories, I reread Linda Dobson's Introduction. Some words that had puzzled me on first reading took on much clearer meaning the second time around: "Some of what the people featured in this book have to say about education may make you uncomfortable; it's better you know it right from the start rather than discover it halfway through the book. If you don't want to hear any more, put the book back on the shelf and don't buy it. I have no desire to deliver anything you don't want to hear. I'm sure it has something to do with humans' predisposition to kill the messenger." Powerful warning, huh? It's because Homeschoolers' Success Stories gets into some pretty unusual territory, and it will definitely make you rethink some deeply ingrained ideas. The book had a profound impact on my some of my own perceptions, or maybe I should say preconceptions--and I'm sure it will have a similar impact on other readers. Even the most seasoned homeschoolers will find something here to stretch and refresh their minds, and the beginning homeschooler will find provocative testimony encouraging openness to more unorthodox paths than they might have considered. -Lillian Jones
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Summary: Encouraging and Exciting!
Review: Linda Dobson's "Homeschoolers' Success Stories" offers an exciting and encouraging picture of the possibile paths and futures of today's homeschoolers. These young people have created hand-made lives; they are carving their own niches in the world. Reading their stories reinforces the hope that homeschooling my children will feed their uniqueness and enable them to make their own, custom, satisfying paths in life. This book would make a great gift for homeschooled teens, as a preview to the places their lives can lead. It would also make a great gift for any homeschooling parent, or even those pesky critical in-laws!
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