Do you need a homeschooling read?

"...an ant farm, a bug jar, a pair of field glasses, a rabbit cage, old appliances to take apart.  an aquarium, a terrarium, a metronome, a collection of petrified wood and another of shells, a globe, a magnifying glass, a calculator, a microscope.  Felt pens, watercolors, magnets, dry-cell batteries, paper-airplane kits.  Swimming teachers, Little League coaches, lithographers, bakers, canoe builders, attorneys, inventors, flutists, fishermen.  And time to ponder all of them.  To read the information on the backs of baseball cards, dig butter clams, dye rice paper, weave on a miniature table loom.  To plant potatoes, tell tall tales, watch birds at the feeder.  To fashion a self in silence.....

....Public school teachers, however well-intentioned, simply cannot match this.....

Our privelege as parents is to understand our children with the thoroughness that true education requires, and our duty is to act on this understanding both wisely and energetically.  Certainly not many parents will feel this means they must pull their children out of schools.  On the other hand, the notion of parents as teachers is, in the broad sense, neither extreme nor outlandish, and whether or not we choose to send our children to schools is secondary to the commitment we make to involve ourselves meaningfully in their educations.  Finally, homeschooling is only the extreme form of a life in which all parents should take part.  All parents are potentially teachers of the sort their children need them to be."

From Family Matters:  Why Homeschooling Makes Sense by David Guterson (author of, among others, Snow Falling on Cedars.  He is a public-school teacher and homeschooling Dad).  This book remains the book that most inspires me that homeschooling well is not only possible but is the best choice for us.