I called my buddy Eric in Southern Indiana tonight. I need to do that way more often. He and his wife homeschool their children and have had some pretty amazing results. They do it a little differently then we did, but then everyone does it differently than everyone else. We very much admire the way they are educating their children. One thing we have done is influenced our kids to at least get a Bachelors degree in something hard before they move on to what they love. If what they love is hard, that is great. If not that is great, too because they have already done something hard and they will be better at the soft thing they want to pursue as a career.
On the other hand, we might have gotten it wrong. Maybe the idea that a child/student is following their passion, they will excel more than if they were distracted long enough to get the “hard” degree. I think maybe Eric has done better with his family in they way the help their children follow their passion. We have no (or at least very few) regrets about how we did our homeschool. Our kids are passionate about what they are doing and in a very good place to build a career. Still, there is another path that is exciting and that we admire very much–the one that allows, even encourages the student to follow their passion–would it have helped Mozart to get a math degree before he dived into composition.