Beyond the headline, I love the NY Times Magazine's entire concept of following up with the kids of one of the pioneering advocates of what we now know as homeschooling. In 1975, Patricia Heidenry wrote about wandering the globe, teaching and raising her four kids while her writer husband did "his own thing."
Now we get to hear how the kid turned out. The youngest Heidenry, Margaret, who is now a screenwriter, takes a look back at her countercultural-but-not-at-all-hippie parents' parenting style.
I really hope the Times is going to make this a series. I mean, did all that yuppie flash card, kindergarten math tutoring overparenting in the early 90s get the kids into Harvard? And what happened to those little, homeschooled spellingbots who dominated the spelling bees around Y2K? Let's see the data, people!
My Parents Were Home-Schooling Anarchists [nyt]
1975: Home Is Where The School Is [nyt]
The Spellbound kids as of 2010:
http://schnaufblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/spellbound-where-are-they-now.html
Dude. Those kids only homeschooled a few years. The oldest was only 11 (did I read that right?), and the youngest just starting school. So all of them spent more years IN school than not. Doesn't count.
Just for full disclosure, we homeschool. I am always curious to hear how children who homechooled for the majority of their schooling turned out. I suspect, just like kids in conventional schooling, some turned out great, some turned out lousy, and the rest are in the middle.
That's a good point. And from the sound of things, their homeschooling sounds more improvised, even ad hoc sometimes, more School of Life, than the more fully developed resources now.