Amen to homeschooling!
Claire,
Loved your article about homeschooling. My son and daughter were homeschooled, and are now continuing the tradition with eight grandchildren. The grandchildren are so far beyond the “normal” level of education that many people feel they must make excuses “well, your children are obviously geniuses.”
One scene from Alexis de Toqueville’s Democracy in America stood out in my mind: a high school class engaged in debate in the town square, in classical Latin and Greek.
If the event was held in the public square, does this not suggest that the public could appreciate classical Latin and Greek? This was not the geeks speaking to the geeks; this was a set of bright students speaking to the public of which they were a part. Elsewhere, Alexis de Toqueville remarked on how widespread was the understanding of the Constitution.
We greatly underestimate the desire and capacity among children for learning. I taught my 6 year old grandson how to add a series of consecutive integers, starting with an explanation of that old formula n(n+1)/2, which was taught in high school.
I wanted to know how well he could generalize, so I asked the sum of the even numbers from 2 to 50. He had the answer while I was still putting my mind in gear. In the future, I shall have to pre-compute answers to my little test questions, lol.
Thank you for your articles, which I always enjoy.
Regards,
Terry McIntyre
