I have learned and read many of the books written by this author. I have recommended them to others. Reading the first pages of the book, makes me want to go back and see if the negative tone I picked up was present before or if something changed. It just quickly felt like there was no hope for any type of education and that there were too many limits and issues. The middle section of the book, on learning styles, has some excellent elements and lists. But again there was a negative undercurrent. The book's premise from the start is that homeschooling is best. I have sent my children to private Christian schools, public schools, online schools, and true homeschooling. My husband and I have made changes based on the personality, needs, strengths, and weaknesses of each child.

I do not think that the negative undercurrent that kept appearing throughout this book has been present in other books by this author. But I also feel like her research is not up to date on the school systems and opportunities that parents have. I feel like her theories are not relevant to all public schools. I do live in Iowa, and I do have some concerns about our public schools, but my concerns are more about how the schools function and how behavior is managed in the school setting. But Iowa is a state that made school choice available, meaning that we can chose to enroll in a private school and the state will pay the dollar amount the public school would have gotten to a school of our choice.

I read an advance copy that had placeholders for images and the ranking opportunities given made that aspect of reading all the more frustrating. Thankful that I was able to read an arc. These thoughts are mine and not at all what I would have guessed based on the author. Thankful to Netgalley for the opportunity to review.

This new soon to release book Reclaiming Education – Teach Your Child to Be a Confident Learner by Cynthia Ulrich Tobias; Mary Jo Dean is for parents to help them weed through education decisions for our children. If you are Christian, you know that children are a blessing from the Lord! We are to be their first teachers, their first line of defense, so we need to take an active role in helping them.

I have many highlighted sections, even some pages in the book, so you know it is good. This was more of a refresher for me since I am already 10 years into homeschooling, so this book would have been more helpful for me when we were deciding. However, I did learn a bit more about learning styles and some new statistics.

“There are roughly 960 Saturdays between birth and high school graduation. The time you spend with your kids is brief and precious.”

“When it’s time to begin their formal schooling, how you choose to educate your children matters more than you can possibly imaging.”

The book shows the pros and cons, along with statistics on what is currently going on with in our public education, which shows it is failing our children. Not only are math and reading scores down, but also how we are viewing the world has changed, and as Christians that should matter to us, we should have a biblical worldview. The author understands that not all parents can homeschool, so it goes into ideas and strategies to help your children in public school. This section is one that all parents can benefit from. Seeing how the majority of children are acting is not good, we parents can’t blame the schools, we need to take responsibility and take the time to parent our children, not just hand them over.

I like that this book also goes into physical environments and different learning styles, and then shows how to use those to best help students learn. I have two children, and I can tell you they both learn differently, and so I use different material and some different curriculum between the two of them to help them learn at their best. Most schools/classrooms are set for analytic learners, so the rest are not learning at their best if they don’t learn analytical.

The last section of this book is about homeschooling, the why, and the new options that are available to homeschoolers. Not many know that homeschoolers can participate in sports, classes, prom, etc…

Overall, this book provides great information on the school systems and how children learn, which will help you to make the best decision for your family. So I highly recommend it for those parents wondering if they should send their children to public school, christian school, or homeschool.