Day 936 of 1000
We took two shots at homeschooling. We homeschooled Kelly’s first grade year between a year of traditional (Christian) kindergarten and second grade. We put both Kelly and Christian into government school for three years starting with Kelly’s second grade year and Christian’s kindergarten year. When we realized that traditional schools (government and private) were almost universally bad in terms of both education and socialization, we pulled them out to homeschool them again when Christian entered the third grade and Kelly the fifth. We are still grateful for the abysmal quality of the Albany, Oregon public schools for being abysmal enough that we knew we had to do something. I have written about this at length in this blog and have piles of handwritten notes that describe our pain and frustration during these difficult transitions.
We got hammered pretty hard for that decision by family, friends (so called), school administrators, acquaintances, and even a few strangers in the street. I used to think some of them were well meaning in their criticism, but am less inclined to think the vast bulk of the criticism was benevolent in any way now that a few years have passed. We have well adjusted, humble, kind kids who both get along quite well with their college peers and excel academically. There is no way you could know whether the socialization part of that last statement is true without spending a little time with them, but the academic part is fairly well established.
Christian is on schedule to graduate Summa Cum Laude with a degree in Applied Mathematics from a nationally recognized program. Many of you know that he skipped highschool to enter college after the eighth grade. He has received two funded PhD offers to tier one research Universities. He plans to accept the one that offered a prestigious (double) Dean’s Fellowship (not RA/not TA–Fellowship) along with sponsorship by a National Research Lab affiliated with MIT. He will work for the professor who wrote the principle textbook used in his field of research.
Kelly is on schedule to graduate Magna Cum Laude with a degree in Statistics at arguably one of the top 5 Statistics programs in the country. Anyone who has read this blog knows she skipped two years of highschool to enter college after the tenth grade as a Senior. The only reason she stayed two years instead of just one is because she had to finish some sequences that took two years. She, too, received two funded PhD offers from national research universities and has chosen to study under a well-known, highly published professor who succeeded in the military and succeeded (wildly) as an entrepreneur before he returned to academia.
The thing that is interesting is that we have started getting complaints and unsolicited advise about the kids chosen path again. We hear some of the following:
- Why are you going there? That is a horrible place to live.
- Why would anyone want to get a PhD? It is a waste of time.
- People who get PhD’s are all arrogant.
- Why would you get a degree in Business?
- Why would you get a degree in Electrical Engineering?
- Why don’t you go have some fun (as if doing something like this is not fun and rewarding)?
I guess it is a good thing we have been through this once or twice before.
Update: On the plane from Raleigh to Phoenix yesterday, while explaining how his brilliant 18 year old daughter had just gotten accepted to a liberal arts program at UNC Chapel Hill, told me it was bad for Kelly and Christian to have missed out on so much important socialization. His daughter went to the Green Hope High government school in Cary. Here is a story on a teacher from Green Hope High who was indicted for child sex crimes. Here is a story on the drug culture at Green Hope.
Betty Blonde #86 – 11/13/2008
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