BETTER LATE THAN EARLY: A New Approach to Your Child's Education

The first half of this frequently hand-waving tract is an argument, by way of a review of the literature, for keeping children home with mother until they are eight or ten years old; the rest consists of some very general recommendations on what to do with them in the meantime. (""Work""-- i.e., household chores -- rises to the head of the list in the later years as ""the best experience a young child can have."") The Moores cite developmental psychologists, ""brain specialists,"" eye and ear doctors, and other ""experts"" to support their claim that the average six.year-old is not ready for reading and arithmetic lessons, and they maintain, probably correctly, that all necessary preparation for existing high schools can, if deferred, be completed in two or three years. Given the generally deadening and/or destructive effect of much public education, their program is probably worthwhile for any parent who can get away with it; the danger is that their reiterated dismissal of ""parents' freedom"" as opposed to ""children's welfare"" and their insistence that the home is more ""cost effective"" than ""tax-supported preschools"" will be used as an argument against day-care funding for children whose parents have no freedom of choice.