Six years ago, I began homeschooling my elder sons, Aidan and Tristan. They attended Fairfax County Public Schools for K-6, becoming more disgruntled with every passing year. Even though they went to an alleged “honors” school for grades 4-6, they were bored out of their minds. The academic material was too easy and moved far too slowly. The non-academic material was humiliatingly infantile. And non-academics – music, dance, chorus, art, poster projects – consumed a majority of their day. As elementary school graduation approached, my sons were hungry for a change.
So what did we do? In consultation with my pupils, I prepared an ultra-academic curriculum. Hours of math every day. Reading serious books. Writing serious essays. Taking college classes. And mastering bodies of knowledge.
In 7th grade, I prepared my sons for the AP United States History exam, and had them informally attend my course in labor economics.
In 8th grade, I prepared my sons for the AP exams in European History, Microeconomics, and Macroeconomics, and had them informally attend my course in public choice.
While my sons’ objective performance and subjective satisfaction in middle school were both sky-high, my wife insisted that they try regular high school. Back in those days, the political brainwashing at FCPS was modest, but the anti-intellectual pedagogical philosophy was already overwhelming. I never liked high school, but at least in my day teachers actually taught their subjects. Not so at FCPS. With the noble exception of their calculus teacher, my sons’ high school teachers just showed videos and treated teens like babies. After three weeks, my wife gave a green light to resume homeschooling.
Silver lining: Since comedy is tragedy plus time, we’ll be laughing about those three weeks of regular high school for the rest of our lives. Yes, a kid in their Spanish class really did raise his hand and say, “Spain’s in… South America, right?”
Once Aidan and Tristan returned to homeschooling, we picked up the pace.
In 9th grade, I prepared them for AP Calculus AB, World History, and U.S. Government. They audited a GMU class on Western religion. And taking advantage of Mason’s High School Guest Matriculant Program, they started studying Spanish.
Why study Spanish, especially given my dim view of foreign language education? Simple: Virtually every college has a foreign language requirement, and my sons want to be professors. Like Homer Simpson, I believe that weaseling is a vital life skill, but in this case, I bluntly told them, “There’s no weaseling out of this.” They were displeased, but worked hard. I hired an excellent Spanish tutor to give them Spanish five days a week year-round. And I asked their tutor to use the immersion method: ¡No Inglés!
The results were phenomenal. In months, the twins started speaking exclusively Spanish to each other. The wishful thinking of, “You hate it now, but work hard and you’ll come to love it” came true for them.
In 10th grade, they prepared themselves for AP Calculus BC and Spanish Language, while I prepared them for AP English Literature. In case you didn’t know, my first big career goal was not to be an econ professor, but an English professor. And I do love the subject, especially when you don’t take it too seriously. My sons continued taking Spanish classes at GMU, skipping from first semester Spanish to third semester, and then skipping again to fifth semester Spanish. Their Spanish tutor filled in the gaps so they practiced every weekday.
Around the same time, my sons also launched the History Twins Podcast, and began doing (largely) in-person interviews with top historians around the world, most notably with Kyle Harper on The Fate of Rome and the role of disease in history.
In 11th grade, the twins prepared themselves for the AP tests in Spanish Literature and Physics C: Mechanics, while I prepared them for AP English Language. Despite Covid, all three tests still happened. (Thank you, College Board, for rising to the challenge). They also officially took a history class on modern Russia, as well as an independent study course where they learned to write their first history paper. Under the guidance of my good friend John Turner, author of the magisterial Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet, Aidan and Tristan used their knowledge of Spanish to dissect the great Mexican Mormon schism of 1936-46. By early summer, their article was ready for submission to an academic journal. And amazingly, by the time they applied to college, they already had their first refereed journal acceptance. Seriously.
When Covid closed the schools, I began homeschooling my younger kids as well, and the twins helped out by teaching a daily Spanish class. Due to their poor attitude, my younger kids learned little Spanish, but my older kids did discover a lot about pedagogy.
In 12th grade, the college application process took over my sons’ lives. While they still prepared themselves for AP Statistics and Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism, filling out applications consumed almost the entire first semester. Despite everything we’d accomplished, I was nervous. The most reliable researchers I cornered told me that discrimination against homeschoolers was now mild, but short of a major lawsuit, how can anyone really find out?
To cope, I gave my sons the same advice I give everyone in this situation: Not only is admission random; funding is random as well. So throw a big pile of dice.
In response, my sons maxed out the Common App, which allows you to apply to up to 20 schools. (They also applied to Georgetown, which stubbornly refuses to join the Common App).
The college application weighed heavily on my students. I raised them to think clearly and speak bluntly. They knew to pull their punches on AP essays, but the whole college admission process is simply drenched in Social Desirability Bias. If you write a personal statement that admits, “I want to attend your school because I need a strong signal to advance my career, and you’re selling the thirteenth-best signal on the market,” you won’t be getting in. This was the one time I had to push them to do their work. Tristan averred that the academic refereeing process (four rounds of revisions!) was easy by comparison. My many pep talks largely fell on deaf ears. Still, they soldiered on, and finally resumed their actual studies. Intellectually, the highlight of their year was probably auditing my Ph.D. Microeconomics class.
Soon, college acceptances started to come in. Once the University of Virginia admitted them to their honors program, I stopped worrying. Johns Hopkins, by far the highest-ranked school in the DC area, took them as well. Then in early February, Vanderbilt offered both of them full merit scholarships. No one else came close to that deal, so that’s where they decided to go. And that’s where they are this very day. (Hi, sons!) If you see Aidan or Tristan on campus, be sure to introduce yourself. They’re not attention hogs like me, but they have much to say about anything of substance, and are hilarious once you put them at ease.
My general read: I think the median school probably did discriminate against my sons for being homeschooled. Their SATs were 99%+, their AP performance was off the charts, they ran an impressive podcast, and they had a refereed history publication. (At many schools, five such pubs would buy an assistant professor tenure!) Yet they were waitlisted by Harvard and Columbia, and rejected by all the lesser Ivies. All public schools accepted them; I don’t know if this stems from lower discrimination or just lower standards. Nevertheless, the net effect of homeschooling was almost certainly highly positive. My sons used their immense educational freedom to go above and beyond, and several top schools were suitably impressed. The critical factor at Vanderbilt, I suspect, was that their faculty, not their admissions committees, hand out academic merit scholarships.
In my view, homeschooling has two goals.
The first is preparing students to be independent adults. On that score, we did great. The twins will be not only great scholars. Before too long they will be great husbands and great fathers. As I told my friends years ago, “You can take those two to the bank.” Even if they change their minds about academia, they have success written all over them. Success, and character.
Homeschooling’s second goal, however, is to give students a happy childhood. How did we score on that count?
The plain fact is that my sons grew up with very few friends their own age. Critics will definitely blame homeschooling, but the truth is that the twins had few friends their own age even when they were in regular school. They’re old souls, who naturally have much more in common with adults. (That said, they are the most nurturing older brothers I have ever known). And since the twins were homeschooled, they were able to socialize with hundreds of fascinating, accomplished adults. We lived abroad for many months, and made friends in Germany, Britain, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Guatemala, Mexico, and all over the U.S. Especially Texas, where we spent three months of Covid. And with the exception of those three awful weeks of high school and three agonizing months of filling out college applications, Aidan and Tristan were pleased as punch throughout.
Yes, they missed their chance to have a normal high school experience. They had something much better instead. At least in their own eyes.
Isn’t that just because I totally brainwashed them? Though I get the brainwashing criticism a lot, I deny the charge. Brainwashing is what conventional schools do when they drown you in Social Desirability Bias, and use intimidation to silence criticism. What I practice, in contrast, is candor and friendliness. I don’t use negative emotions to blackmail people into agreeing with me. I speak my mind, and face hard questions with a smile. Brainwashing? No, but I freely concede that all my kids deeply trust me. All false modesty aside, that’s because I’ve earned that deep trust with a lifetime of unblemished honesty. While I occasionally respond to children’s questions with, “I’ll tell you when you’re older,” I sugarcoat nothing. Ask any of them if you doubt me.
In my work on parenting, I greatly downplay the effects of upbringing. Why then did I bother homeschooling? At minimum, I gave my kids a much happier childhood. They never would have “adjusted” to regular school – not in a year, not in six years, not in a century. And while it’s hard to be sure, I’m confident that I improved their long-run prospects as well. If you find this inconsistent, remember that I gave my sons a family environment that was literally off the charts.
Coda: I never claimed that homeschooling was for everyone… at least until Covid closed the schools. Since our local schools finally re-opened, we sent our younger kids back to FCPS on an experimental basis. From what I’ve seen so far, the schools are worse than ever. FCPS is basically just daycare. They’ve combined their long-standing anti-intellectualism with novel ugly brainwashing.
Still, regular school remains a great place to hang out with your friends. After three weeks, it looks like my daughter will do 4th grade at FCPS. That’s fine. Let her play. Vali can prepare for her future when she’s older. Simon, my son in middle school, has decided to take the other path. Starting today, he’s back in homeschool. He’s going to need a different curriculum than his brothers; if they’re old souls, Simon’s a young soul. Math is non-negotiable, but otherwise he and I will work things out together. Like Bilbo at the end of Return of the King, “I think I’m quite ready for another adventure.” Six years from now, I’ll share his homeschooling story, too.
READER COMMENTS
Scott Gibb
Sep 13 2021 at 11:00am
Super impressive.
Wish I could be there to see the day-to-day operations of the homeschool.
Out West here, we have Challenger School for pre-school through 8th. It’s a well-run private school with superb academics and American Constitutional values. We’ve been very happy with it.
For high school, we still need to come up with a plan. Will remember this post when crafting ours. Thanks.
Alan Goldhammer
Sep 13 2021 at 11:33am
I am curious about how much time you had to take out of your work day for home school chores. Not everyone would be in a position to do this. Certainly when I was working while my girls were middle school and high school, there was no time in either my or my wife’s work schedule to plan lessons, teach, and make sure that work was being graded. Maybe only college professors can do this.
Robert Lee Coffey
Sep 13 2021 at 12:31pm
I know plenty of non-college professors who home school.
In most (but not all) cases, it is a single income household with the other parent doing the home schooling.
jo Dunn
Sep 17 2021 at 7:56am
I am in the UK. I Electively Home Educated ( UK term) 3 children from birth to 16 years of age. Certainly while young they needed. me there.( for safety if nothing else!)…by around age 14 they ran their own studies pretty much and I was busy with my own work and responsibilities outside the home. My job was to enable, to encourage and to help them research their options. All went to our local 6th form college (age 16-18) to take A levels and then on to University. Eldest went to Cambridge and graduated with a double first. Youngest is in 3rd at St Andrews. Middle child has a significant processing difficulty but is in his 3rd year of a Philosophy degree with the Open University. What did we do: age birth-12 we played, we read, we talked, we did essential academics ( maths, reading, penmanship, typing) and then anything that caught their interest. We went on visits and field trips and talked some more. Age 13 or so we began exam courses ( UK GCSE’S) And more formal studies built up.. but choosing the ” hoops to jump through” carefully so as to leave time for studies and skills not in the exam/school curriculum.
Chris
Sep 13 2021 at 12:33pm
You are completely right. I don’t know that there’s much better home school teacher than a college professor. Well educated, access to a college library, access to professors from a range of fields, and, most importantly, time. I don’t get the impression that Bryan is arguing that everyone should homeschool. I think it’s just an example of successful homeschooling.
and for me, that’s where the bias against homeschooling really comes in. Most parents that homeschool are not active college professors. They lack the education and resources necessary to truly teach a range of subjects over a multi-year timeframe and they lack the objectivity to adequately judge progress.
Alan Goldhammer
Sep 13 2021 at 12:54pm
Chris, you are missing the big point. It’s not that a college professor is better at homeschooling than a non-professor. I taught at the college level but when I moved into the pharma industry, I was working 10 hour days at a minimum. I would not have any free time to adequately do the job. Maybe all Professor Caplan has to do is make sure he shows up for his class assignments. It’s far different when one has an employer with different expectations regarding office attendance and duties.
Chris
Sep 13 2021 at 1:23pm
I agree. I’m not arguing that no one else could do it, merely that a college professor is the confluence of many helpful qualities, one of which is time. There are a lot of people with the education necessary to homeschool, but little time to do so, and a lot more people with the time, but little education or teaching experience needed. A college professor has time, education, teaching experience and the financial stability necessary to homeschool. Few others have those things (or the other things I mentioned above)
robc
Sep 14 2021 at 9:12am
I know plenty of non-professors who home school. Generally there is only one working parent. But some are dual income, they just have flexibility in their schedule to enable each parent to handle half the task. You basically can’t do it with two 8-5 jobs.
Also in many (most?) areas there is a homeschooling resources, often a private school that sets aside 1 day for homeschooled kids to focus on things they cannot get at home easily.
jo Dunn
Sep 17 2021 at 8:05am
Essentially all that is required for successful home education is an interested adult with an enquiring mind and a resourceful attitude, willing to learn themselves and willing to advocate for and enable their child along the way. The research in the UK at least shows that the educational attainment gap by socio-economic background that affects school children narrows very significantly in home education: wealth or parental academic achievement levels seem to have much less impact on Home Educated children outcomes. A parent who knows their child, values education, is curious alongside their child and supports them overcomes SO much. You do NOT have to be a well-connected , academic professor to Home Educated well. And in the UK the Home Educating community is very eclectic, affording opportunities to meet a wide range of people and to be able to draw on their knowledge and skills.
Chris
Sep 13 2021 at 12:40pm
Bryan, what do you consider brainwashing? That fees a lot like a typical conservative talking point of kids in schools getting introduced to ideas parents disagree with.
also, I’m curious how you know your sons will be great husbands when, as you have mentioned, their interactions with people their own age are extremely limited. I would fear that having lacked direct observation and participation in relationships with peers would leave a person overly naive in an adult relationship. I would also fear that would extend to interactions with anyone who is significantly different than themselves, though perhaps your travels have diminished this negative. For instance, do you know how they cope with being forced to work with someone who’s incompetent? If school teaches you nothing else, it teaches you how to deal with this sort of group dynamic.
I’m not knocking your educational approach, as noted in another comment, you are likely a perfect candidate for leading a home schooling effort. I’m truly interested in how you approached these possible issues though.
John hare
Sep 13 2021 at 4:48pm
I would also be interested in their social abilities. I dropped out of elementary school and did a semester of night school before getting a GED. Did some college engineering with high b average. Having worked percentage of piecework from 11 years old until 18 years old, I had very little concept of people not working in their own self interest. That ranging from work to school to relationships. Several decades later, I can state that I was socially retarded for many years which really showed in failed relationships. Mostly my fault.
In short, I would like to know how they do as well.
Mark Z
Sep 14 2021 at 1:54am
“Introduced” seems like an understatement, akin to saying I was “introduced” to Catholicism at my school. I wasn’t; I was indoctrinated. Political content in public schools, from what I’ve read of it, is often taught with a similar epistemology: as fact rather than merely as ‘here’s an idea to reflect on.’
Joel N Pollen
Sep 14 2021 at 9:33am
I feel that the “insufficient socialization” objection to homeschooling is quite overstated. Two points:
There are many varieties of homeschooling, and even within the homeschool paradigm there are many opportunities to interact with peers. I never attended a public school until I went to college, but my homeschooling experience included quite a bit of peer interaction (in-person classes taught by friends of my parents, a homeschool drama club, and church youth group, among others).
I think that the returns to peer interaction for children are greatly overrated and diminish quite a lot with scale. Sending your 12-17 year old to spend 40 hours a week with other children their age is certainly far too much. It’s also a historical novelty. Children have learned to be adults for millenia without spending all their time in enormous peer groups. Moreover, my experience of working with high-school age kids is that a few bad apples can really ruin the bunch. A group of 20 teenagers supervised by one or zero adults tends to have a lot of really nasty dynamics. For every kid that emerges from high school “well-adjusted” and socially competent I think there is another who is significantly damaged by the cruelty, foolishness, and vices of their peers.
To address your statements specifically:
“I would fear that having lacked direct observation and participation in relationships with peers would leave a person overly naive in an adult relationship.”
I don’t really see why this would be. How does an immature 14 year old interacting with other immature 14 year olds who don’t care deeply for each other learn anything about being in a responsible, mutually loving relationship? I think children learn far more about relationships from the example of the adults in their lives than from their peers. If you want to do something well, you learn from those who already do it well, not from those who are just as incompetent and ill-informed as you are. As an analogy, would it be better to learn Spanish from a bunch of people with approximately the same knowledge level as yourself, or from a native speaker?
“For instance, do you know how they cope with being forced to work with someone who’s incompetent? If school teaches you nothing else, it teaches you how to deal with this sort of group dynamic.”
Are you really suggesting that spending several years of your life with incompetent people is a good thing? Maybe there is some benefit to having some exposure to incompetence, but surely a much smaller dose than you get in public school! Moreover, working with incompetent people is something most adults strive to avoid, often with success. Why spend all your time getting good at something you hope to avoid later in life?
Midwesterner
Sep 15 2021 at 12:30am
Have you visited an average public high school lately? The kids in those schools will be lucky to stay out of prison or a mental hospital once they reach adulthood, let alone be great husbands and fathers.
I used to think that homeschooling left kids with poorly adjusted social skills. But having heard stories from multiple family members who teach in the public school system, you’d be lucky to get your kid back after 12 grades without a mental illness and the ability to read and do basic math.
My mother-in-law teaches middle school math in the inner city of our city of 500k. She has no ability to maintain classroom discipline. The administration will not remove disruptive students from the classroom, so my mother-in-law has to accommodate them. The kids know this, and so they gang up on her anytime she tries to enforce discipline or limit the disruption. She was almost physically assaulted twice last year. One of the parents of the offending students had the gall to try and file a complaint on her when she raised the issue with the school administration.
To solve the problem, the school district isn’t changing its discipline policies. Instead, it is using Covid grant money for new iPads for each student. They let them download any social media app or games they want. And the teachers can’t prevent the kids from using them in class because their textbooks are also on the iPad. The school districts are actively preventing these kids from learning by purposefully creating distractions in the classroom.
My mother-in-law has basically decided that as long as students aren’t being disruptive, she will let them use their tablets or phones, draw on their desks, walk around in the back of the classroom, whatever it takes so she can attempt to teach the four or five kids that do want to learn. It’s just not worth the risk of injury anymore.
My mother retired last year. She was a Family and Consumer Sciences teacher, basically cooking and sewing. She taught a sex education class, too. She came back from Christmas break last year to construction in her classroom. They were building a wall right down the middle of her kitchen classroom. Drywall, not plexiglass.
She asked what they were doing and the administration said that the district was using Covid grant money to create a “safe space” for kids to visit the school psychologist, also a new hire with Covid money. They decided to divide her classroom and tear out half the kitchens. They put cubicles in the new room with bean bag chairs and fidget toys so the kids could relieve their anxiety. These are high school kids, mind you.
Anytime they want, students can leave the classroom and say they want to talk to Ms. T, the psychologist, and teachers have to let them go. They naturally pick the most disruptive times and milk it for all it’s worth. When my mother started marking these kids absent, she was admonished publicly during a school wide faculty meeting.
Both my mother and mother-in-law have been under immense pressure to pass kids that would never pass under normal circumstances. The school administrators continue to push for endless extra credit or acceptance of late work so these students can pass no matter what. Every faculty meeting is the same mantra, what are you doing to help these kids pass? Covid has been hard on them, let’s cut them some slack, if you know what I mean. My mother straight up had an administrator come to her office at the end of her last semester and ask if she could just bump a few F’s to D’s before she retired. She honorably refused.
My sister is a sign language interpreter for a few 4th graders in one of the nicer school districts in the area. One of the kids she signs for relies heavily on reading lips to understand what’s going on. Mandatory masks have obviously been highly detrimental for this student. Covid has set him back at least two grade levels. He no longer even tries, and my sister basically is getting paid to go through the 4th grade again, he won’t even look at her in class, he’s too busy playing with the latest fidget toy.
All of the kids at this school can have whatever fidget toys they want, no matter how disruptive they are. The popular one currently is a massive snap board. It’s got rows and columns big plastic concave buttons on it that make a massive snapping noise when you push them. The teachers have been told by the administration that they have to let the kids use these during instruction, it helps with anxiety or something.
And because there are no restrictions on them, a massive arms race in these toys has ensued, and the kids continue to bring in bigger and bigger fidget spinners, poppers, squeeze animals, etc. My sister said that one student even brought a full size panda body pillow to school last week and took a nap on it. The teachers can do nothing to stop it, and the kids know they can’t and abuse their inability to enforce discipline mercilessly.
Don’t even get me started on parent teacher conferences. Parents only show up when they don’t feel their student is getting the grade they want them to have. No evidence of tardiness, absence, or unsubmitted work is sufficient to convince these parents that their children is at fault. It is always the teacher’s fault.
And these parents are ruthless. They make it abundantly clear that they will make the teacher’s life a living hell until their child’s grade is adjusted to the parent’s liking. They will email, call, and visit the school administration incessantly to refute every claim made by the teacher that their child was indeed absent, tardy, or did not, in fact, turn that paper in.
These parents will not infrequently complete the student’s homework for them, sometimes in their own handwriting. They’ll then email the teachers when their work is graded fairly and earns the C that it deserves. Both of my mother and mother-in-law have shown me email exchanges where the parents admit to having completed their student’s homework and demand to know why they still received a C. The school administrators shrug and look the other way.
There is literally zero education occurring in the public schools. Don’t let the democrats sell you on universal daycare or preschool: you’re already paying for it, and it is uglier than sin.
At this point, we need to do one of two things with our school system:
Literally burn it to the ground. Fire everyone from the school board down to the janitors, and take some of those newly unemployed reaper drones from Afghanistan and drop predator missiles on every building, playground, and administration building in the country. On those ashes, perhaps something functional can be built.
End the charade that there is learning occurring in the classroom. Just stop the lie. Let the kids do recess for 8 hours a day. Turn the schools into the prison daycare centers that they already are. Once they graduate, they’ll at least be conditioned for the hard time they’ll be doing behind bars when they can’t read or write or hold down any kind of job and inevitably resort to a life of crime. At least we’ll save a fortune in the process.
That’s the public schools for you. I’ll take my chances homeschooling any day of the week over the damage the public school system does to kids. A whole generation of children is being destroyed before your eyes, and you’re literally paying for it to happen with your tax dollars. How much must people hate children to allow this travesty to continue?
If you don’t believe these anecdotes, I’d encourage you to go talk to the public school teachers you know. I guarantee they have stories at least this bad to share with you. I live in a fairly industrial midwestern town out in the middle of nowhere. I can’t imagine what is going on in the Chicago, New York City, or LA school systems. Please vote in your school board elections accordingly.
Tyler Wells
Sep 13 2021 at 12:57pm
I think the ability to tailor your child’s experience is one of the great advantages of homeschooling. My child’s situation is very different, he is an athlete and wants a flexible schedule in order to train twice daily (I know what Bryan thinks about pursuing interests like athletics). I have given him certain targets to meet and, if he meets them and is still interested in home schooling, we will give it a go next year.
Jonathan S
Sep 15 2021 at 6:52pm
I’m pretty sure Bryan has no problem with a student doing athletics, music, art, foreign language, etc. so long as the student actually wants to do that. Bryan’s objection is that most students don’t want to be doing those activities and there is no long-run benefit for most students, thus these activities should not be part of the mandatory curriculum.
Aaron
Sep 13 2021 at 2:47pm
Your sons had great SATs and APs, but what they didn’t have was great grades in school (because homeschoolers either don’t get grades or if they do they’re pretty much meaningless). At Harvard, they’re competing against kids who did great in all three areas. Even though they had an impressive podcast and academic paper, I can see why the Harvard admissions folks could decide to give the edge to the kid who has demonstrated the ability to do well in a traditional academic environment.
I had a friend in high school with a 1600 SAT and a 4.0 GPA. He literally took the hardest possible classes the school would let him take and got an A in every single one. He was also one of the best performers in the band and was captain of the school’s quiz bowl team. Despite this, he was rejected by Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. I think the reason was that my school did not have pluses and minuses. You could only get an A, B, C, etc. This meant that getting a 4.0 was not that hard, and a few kids actually achieved it every year. I think your sons had the same problem – they simply did not have enough opportunities to prove themselves.
dan1111
Sep 14 2021 at 7:09am
Ranking them lower because they lacked “great grades in school”, <i>would be</i> discriminating against them for homeschooling.
That’s something that can only be obtained in school, so if they are insisting on this, and not even allowing amazing achievements like having a peer reviewed paper to compensate for it, then they are placing an insurmountable barrier to home schoolers being admitted.
Nor is there any plausible argument that the schools lack information about them because of the lack of grades. School grades are subjective and next to useless for comparing elite students that get into places like Harvard. Does the fact that some teachers gave you an A add any information to top SAT and AP scores? I don’t think so!
Speed
Sep 13 2021 at 5:08pm
So the job of a university is to issue degrees and convince the world, especially potential employers, of their value in the real world.
Jose Pablo
Sep 13 2021 at 5:56pm
No, the main job of a university is providing a salary to the teachers it employs.
It is a tough one, in most cases (leaving mathematical wizards, doctors, vet and engineers apart) nobody (outside of the academic world) is able to find things of any economic value for them to do.
JCambias
Sep 14 2021 at 7:38am
You’re both mistaken. The purpose of a University is to provide employment and status to its administrators.
Jose Pablo
Sep 13 2021 at 6:09pm
Very impressive post Bryan!
I am more appalled every year for the diminishing quality of the teachers in my kids’ public high school.
Particularly so because the situation will be so easy to improve. At the beginning of the scholar year, every parent knows what teachers he wants for his kids and what teachers he wants to avoid (at all costs). So, the information about the quality of the teachers is there. Loud and clear. You only have to devise a mechanism to “extract and compile” this information.
For instance, let the parents choose the teacher for his kids. The teacher that does not get any kid is fired. The teacher whose class everybody wants to attend rewarded.
MarkW
Sep 14 2021 at 7:23am
…and rejected by all the lesser Ivies.
Lol – that was because the lesser Ivies feared your kids wouldn’t enroll if accepted and didn’t want to get dinged on their US News rankings. They rejected your kids before your kids got a chance to reject them.
Roger Sweeny
Sep 14 2021 at 1:30pm
From what I know of the college admissions process, this is exactly right.
Midwesterner
Sep 14 2021 at 11:18pm
Any good parent wouldn’t want their kids to go to those reeducation camps anyway.
I’ve been in a hiring position before, and anytime I saw an Ivy League resume come across my desk, it went straight into the trash can. I work at an engineering firm, and we can’t have any hubris when it comes to design decisions that affect the safety of a machine or structure.
I find that kids with good grades from state schools make far better employees than rich kids who think they know it all simply because their parents donated to the right cause and got them into Harvard. The state school kids are at least teachable.
Kerry
Sep 14 2021 at 8:22am
My homeschooling plan is a bit different, although it follows a different Caplan script. My kids are homeschooled around 10 hours a week through middle school age. Then I have my kids enroll in our local, free community college at 13-14. Then they get their Associates and transfer to the local well ranked university at 16, and graduate at 18. It’s very, very cheap. Also, transfer applications are much easier, and low stress. You don’t even need standardized tests!
My question for Bryan is why do “high school” at all, when the kids were clearly college ready? “I graduated from college at 18” is a stronger signal than “I graduated from Yale”, and much easier to pull off.
Emile Hatem
Sep 18 2021 at 11:42am
I’d say not. Bryan’s sons want to academics, so recommendations from elite professors are crucial. Elite professors are more likely to be found at elite schools than at state schools.
Also, graduating college at 18 isn’t that impressive by itself. Most smart students could graduate college by 18 with adult guidance. If the student did it alone, then it signals a special drive. Maybe you (the parent) should keep your involvement a secret in your kids’ applications 😉
PEEFsmash
Sep 27 2021 at 11:11am
Kerry, I would love to read a fuller post about this. I would have loved this environment.
Kaitlin Johnson
Sep 14 2021 at 8:32am
Wow. I’m in AP Spanish Lang as a junior currently and I’ve been taking Spanish since kindergarten, turned down even for honors pre-calc bc my math teacher said something to the effect that I’m “a history kid” and can’t improve enough in math. School is 80-90%+ ‘group projects’ where most kids look at instagram and the one kid working has to explain everything to the group a bunch of times. The lack of productivity or creative thinking that happens is stunning. No wonder I can’t wait for next summer already, when I have the time to actually learn.
Michael Stack
Sep 14 2021 at 10:48am
We did a homeschooling experiment with my daughter last year, and I’d say it was OK.
She learned a lot more than she would have in school, but she missed out on a lot of the structure. The other issue here is finding the time to create the curriculum, and being able to follow up with your kids to ensure they’re staying on point. For self-starting kids who are really motivated to learn, I think homeschooling is great.
AlexR
Sep 14 2021 at 1:56pm
Great post. I too wish I’d had the time to homeschool my kids. This will become easier over time with advances in educational software and videos. Ideally, a parent could mostly review progress made in assignments, be available to answer questions and do modest tutoring. On the other hand, there seems to be a wave of colleges that are dropping standardized exams from the admissions process.
On the issue of honesty in essays, my son flunked the entrance exam for Thomas Jefferson HS for being honest and clear thinking on the essay portion. The exam question in 2015 was how he would respond to financial incentives offered by a big pharma company to end his research along a certain (competing) line. My son told me he responded that it would depend on how large the payout would be and what alternative research options he had: the payout might fund multiple promising lines with the potential to reduce disease on net. I was surprised and delighted by this answer, but knew that it was disastrously “wrong.”
David
Sep 14 2021 at 4:12pm
For what it’s worth, my wife was homeschooled from 4th-12th grade and received a scholarship that covered tuition from GMU. I think at least one or two of the other University Scholars from that year were homeschooled.
A Country Farmer
Sep 14 2021 at 6:11pm
A book on how to homeschool would be great! It’s an intimidating prospect.
Susan d Carpenter
Sep 15 2021 at 5:45am
Since you love English so much, how did you choose the books for the AP in English Literature? There are so many books out there and so little time. Please let me know how you chose and a list of what books you chose. I am fascinated by your homeschooling approach.
derek
Sep 15 2021 at 9:23am
A couple of major quibbles:
1) You did not home-school them in Spanish. You hired a 5-days-a-week one-on-two tutor. Guess what? You got a great learning outcome by spending a very large amount of per student money.
2) Your take on the correct approach to college essays seems pretty off to me. In my opinion, the way for your sons to have written the best college essay would have been to talk about their ambitions and SPECIFICS (not ranks, sheesh) about how each school would help them achieve their goals. Why do they want to become professors? If their goal is to be professors for the sake of being professors, they… do not have a real reason. Make them articulate the real reason, and they will have a good essay that is fully honest.
robc
Sep 16 2021 at 11:35am
If the tutor came to their home, it was home-schooling.
Grand Rapids Mike
Sep 15 2021 at 9:48am
Not of the high intellectual pedigree of most on this site. In Illinois there is a huge liberal bias in pubic schools. Did not home school. So while I sent my children to Catholic Elementary and then Public High Schools, spent significant time requiring and understanding Milton Friedman book Free To Choose, and other related books. Several high school teachers were not happy when they questioned their teaching or did not buy into their brainwashing. Also tutored them in Math. Also required they get jobs in the summer and work part time in the school months. Along with that required they learn how to manage money and be responsible. The result is responsible hard working adults.
Taylor Harris
Sep 15 2021 at 11:59am
If you have heard of Acton Academy I would be curious your thoughts about whether that can provide more of a social dynamic and household feasability, assuming there are always pros/cons, curious to hear any thoughts on the program?
https://www.actonacademy.org/
Grand Rapids Mike
Sep 15 2021 at 3:21pm
I have heard of and visited the Acton Institute Web Site. I think a possible followup article would be the economics of alternative options for Home Schooling. The article itself focused on children of highly educated parents. By far most are not of this caliber, so more practicle approaches to avoid the indoctrination in public schools are needed. This is a serious subject deserving of attention.
Emile Hatem
Sep 18 2021 at 11:23am
I’m curious whether you (Bryan) gave your sons any of the money saved. Otherwise, kids have little incentive to prefer lower cost.
I’d love to hear from any parent who gave their children some of the money saved from their college choices, and how they structured the arrangement.
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