Homeschooled Alumni Impressive and Growing
Famous Homeschoolers Can Be Proud of their Ranks
Sep 29, 2008
By most accounts, 2 million children are homeschooled in the United States, with the learning choice gaining in popularity all the time. It’s an alma mater that’s increasingly drawing quite an illustrious alumni. Even discounting the necessarily homeschooled like George Washington and Helen Keller, the ranks of notable homeschoolers is impressive.
Artists
Andrew Wyeth attended school only to third grade, and after that received his art training and his academic education entirely at home. He was taught by a private tutor until he was 18, an experience for which he was endlessly grateful, commenting in a 1986 magazine interview, “I had friends -- neighborhood boys that I saw on weekends but-not much during the week But that never bothered me. I realized that I was different. …I cherished the time alone because it made me utilize every moment. I realized I had this great opportunity." [Gifted Children Monthly, May 1986 - Vol 7 No. 5].
Andrew Wyeth kept his son, artist Jamie, home as well, after the sixth grade.
Photographer Ansel Adams was also homeschooled. He was painfully shy and had trouble fitting in at the various schools his parents tried for him. He was finally tutored at home by his father and aunt.
Writers
Mystery writer Agatha Christie was taught at home by her mother. A more contemporary author, well known to most young people today, is Christopher Paolini, who wrote the popular Eragon series [Random House, 2004]. As a child, Paolini often wrote short stories and poems, made frequent trips to the library, and read widely.
Another homeschooled author is Jedediah Purdy, a Harvard graduate who was home schooled in rural West Virginia until he was fourteen, Jedediah Purdy currently studies law, environment, and social values at Yale, and authored the book For Common Things: Irony, Trust and Commitment in America Today [Knopf; 1st edition (August 31, 1999].
Academicians
Anthropologist Mary Leakey was taught at home by tutors hired by her exasperated mother after she was expelled from each convent school in which she was enrolled. She was expelled from one for refusing to recite poetry, and from a second for causing an explosion in a chemistry laboratory. Mary's only interests were drawing and archaeology.
Those turned out to be solid interests, since Leakey went on to become a leading paleo-anthropologist. She was ultimately awarded an honorary degree from Oxford University, which had previously refused her enrollment. (from Ancestral Passions, by Virginia Morrel, Touchstone 1996)
A homeschooled student, Erik Demaine became interested in computers and then computer programming when he was 12 years old. He persuaded administrators of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to let him take classes in math and computer science, with his father sitting in as an auditor.
He received his doctorate at age 20, the same age that he became the youngest professor ever at M.I.T, where he is the leading theoretician in the emerging field of origami mathematics, the formal study of what can be done with a folded sheet of paper. In 2003 he was granted a MacArthur "genius" fellowship. Today, at 23, he has published over 100 academic papers in fields as diverse as computational geometry, combinatorial game theory, data structures and graph theory. ["Origami as the Shape of Things to Come", NY Times, 2005]
Athletes
Venus and Serena Williams, known the world over for their remarkable tennis playing abilities, were home-schooled by their father from middle school on. As part of their education, they put on tennis clinics for underprivileged children and spoke in inner city schools.
Other homeschooled athletes include cyclist Graeme Pitts, up and coming basket ball point guard Jonathan Loe and Heisman Trophy winner, Tim Tebow.
Celebrities
And of course a stack of celebrities are homeschooled, largely because homeschooling provides the flexibility musicians and actors need to do their work. Homeschooled musicians include boy bands like the Hanson Brothers and, more recently, the popular Jonas Brothers, and English Classical Pianist Joanna MacGregor.
Other homeschooled celebrities include Dakota Fanning, Jayden Smith,Elijah Wood,Leann Rimes and Raven Simone.
Homeschooling hasn’t been a “fringe” movement in years, as evidenced by the long time influence of homeschooled alumni who have affected everything from the sciences to the arts. And many more “new grads” will be coming to the forefront of American life with a resume that includes an incomparable education at home.
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