My homeschooling mentor...

... is Charlotte Mason. In the 1800s she established a biblically-based teacher training school in the Lake District of England. Need I say more? (Why do I like everything that comes out of the Lake District?) Her books are the kind where you read one sentence and chew on it for a week. So, I'm only on page 16 of Home Education. But her relevance for today caused me to laugh out loud:

[on the faults of a dry, mechanical education]:
Many a little girl, especially, leaves the home schoolroom with a distaste for all manner of learning, an aversion to mental effort, which lasts her lifetime, and that is why she grows up to read little but trashy novels, and to talk all day about her clothes.

I'm so thankful that because I was homeschooled, this was not my fate.