Famous Homeschoolers

[GoddessOfGuinness]

Found this list on another website http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/notable.htm This site is an excellent resource for those with gifted children.

Just thought I'd share the list with you, so you can share the info with those who dismiss homeschooling. :hi:

Ansel Adams, (1902-1984) arguably the greatest photographer of the 20th century
"At twelve, unable to stand the confinement and tedium of the classroom, he utterly disrupted his lessons with wild laughter and undisguised contempt for the inept ramblings of his teachers. His father decided that Ansel’s formal education was best ended. From that point forward, the boy was home-schooled in Greek, the English classics, algebra, and the glories of the ocean, inlets, and rocky beaches that surrounded their home very near San Francisco."

John Adams, (1735-1826) 2nd president of the United States
John Adams was taught to read at home, and then happily went for lessons with a handful of children, taught in the kitchen of a neighbor woman. He was considered "fitted for college" and proceeded to Harvard at age 15...

John Quincy Adams, (1767-1848) 6th president of the United States
"The rector of the school thought him impertinent and merited a thrashing, as he informed his father. Adam's response was exactly what his own father's would have been. "Send the boys (John Quincy was 12 or 13 at the time) to me this evening," he answered. He had no wish to see his children subjected to such "littleness of soul" he explained to Abigail in a letter..." "Adams arranged for tutors for the two boys, and the opportunity for them to attend lectures at the university."

Louisa May Alcott, (1832-1888) author of Little Women and Little Men, among others
primarily educated by her father

Bronson Alcott, her father...
self-educated

Wilson Bentley, (1865-1931) pioneering work in the area of photomicrography, most notably his extensive work with snow crystals (snowflakes)
self educated, The Snowflake Man: A Biography of Wilson A. Bentley

Colfax family, (1980's) Grant, Drew, Reed and Garth. Parents David and Micki became "well known in the 1980's for "homeschooling" three of their sons into Harvard." The boys... have gone on to become Fulbright and Rockefeller Fellows with high honors at Harvard
The Colfax boys didn't attend school, but instead were homeschooled in their "Forty-Seven-Acre Classroom." Drew completed his studies at Harvard and became a physician. Read more in thier books, Hard Times in Paradise and Homeschooling for Excellence

Agatha Christie, (1890-1976) author of many, many mysteries including Murder on the Orient Express...
Educated privately at home

Edward Curtis, (1868-1952) photographer of the early 1900's
"complicated, passionate, self-educated pioneer and visionary artist who rose from poverty and obscurity to become the most famous photographer of his time"

Erik Demaine, assistant professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the leading theoretician in the emerging field of origami mathematics
home-schooled by his father, traveled around the United States, settling somewhere new every 6 to 12 months; he started college courses at 12, and received his doctorate at 20 and at the same age became the youngest professor ever at M.I.T. In 2003 he was granted a MacArthur "genius" fellowship...

Thomas Edison, (1847-1931) inventor
"Edison entered school in Port Huron (at age 7), but his teachers considered him to be a dull student. Because of hearing problems, Edison had difficulty following the lessons and his school attendance became sporadic..." "He was taught at home by his mother, a former teacher..."

Paul Erdos, Hungarian mathematician
"Until he reached his teens, Erdös's mother kept him out of school, fearing that it was the source of childhood contagion." His biography: The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdös and the Search for Mathematical Truth

Benjamin Franklin, printer, inventor, statesman, and more
attended grammar school from age 8 - 10

Guterson family, (1980's) 3 sons
"It is this contradiction--schooling his own children at home, while teaching his neighbors' children in school--that Guterson tries to dissect and defend," in Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense

C.S. Lewis, (1898-1963) author, Chronicles of Narnia
He was tutored at home by his mother and a governess at first, then after his
mother's death (about 10) was sent to various boarding schools, and later was sent to live with a tutor, who prepared him for Oxford.

Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States
Tutors, self-educated

Todd Lodwick, Nordic skier, World Cup winner and Olympic 2002 skier
?

Countess Augusta Ada Lovelace, (1815-1852) credited with being the first woman programmer
Daughter of Lord Byron, Ada was educated at home by governesses and tutors hired by her mother. US Department of Defense named the programming language ADA in her honor

Benoit Mandelbrot, Harvard mathematician who pioneered the study of fractal geometry
...did poorly in school and was homeschooled by his uncle from age 12

Margaret Mead, (1901-1978) anthropologist
Sometimes she was even schooled at home by her grandmother. In school, Margaret sometimes felt out of place because of her personal background...

Yehudi Menuhin, (1916-1999) Violinist
"I went to school for precisely one day at the age of 6, by which time I could read quite well, and write, and calculate a little. My one day was not unhappy but bewildered. Very quietly I sat in the class, the teacher stood at the front and said incomprehensible things for a long time and my attention eventually wandered to the window through which I could see a tree. The tree was the only detail I remembered clearly enough to report at home that afternoon and that was the end of my schooling."

Polgar sisters Sofia, Susan, Judit, chess masters
Their autobiography, Queen of the Kings Game...

Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) author
"never received a formal education"

Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) the discoverer of oxygen, and the father of modern chemistry
Also the founder of the first Unitarian church in America. In his mid teens he fell seriously ill with tuberculosis of the lungs, was forced to drop out of school, and for a time abandoned his plan of entering the ministry. As he gathered strength after his illness, he taught himself French, Italian, and German and learned Chaldean, Syrian and Arabic. Privately, he also learned the rudiments of geometry, algebra and mathematics...

Gloria Steinem (1934- ) feminist, writer and co-founder of Ms. Magazine
Ages 10-17 attended school on an irregular basis, while caring for her emotionally disturbed mother...

Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-1992) author
"Childhood illness, Stills Disease, kept her close to home and under the watchful care of her mother. She was home schooled by her mother, and in the process was introduced to Celtic and Saxon legends. This had the unexpected result of delaying her reading. Having been weaned on Beowulf, she could not bear to read from a new reader's primer. It was not until she and her mother returned to England in 1930 that she learned to read."

Swann family Alexandra, Victoria, Christopher, Dominic, Francesca, Benjamin and others (10 children!)
"In spite of the rapid pace, however, we never skipped any grades. Although we were in school every day, our hours were not long. Accelerated education gives a young person an early start on life." Also read No Regrets: How Home Schooling Earned Me A Masters Degree At Age 16.

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) architect
He was educated at Second Ward School, Madison from 1879 to 1883. He entered the University of Wisconsin at 15 as a special student, studying engineering because the school had no course in architecture

Virginia Woolf, (1882-1941) author
"Virginia was educated by private tutors and by extensive reading of literary classics in her father's library."

Andrew Wyeth, (1917- ) artist
"His parents, based in part on his frail health, made this decision about his education. Rather than continuing to deal with schools any longer, he attended until the third grade; it was thought best his father taught him at home." Read The Homeschooling of Andrew Wyeth

Jamie Wyeth, (1946- ) artist
"He left public school after the sixth grade to be tutored at home so he could devote more time to art. Having acquired most of his own schooling from private tutors, his father didn't consider a formal education necessary for an artist."

[mzmolly]

1. Nice list.

:hi:

[coffeenap]

2. I am adding this list to my son's college application files--

thanks!!

[mopinko]

3. i always said- it's good enough for

most royal families, it's good enough for us.
i wish i could be doing it still. my 15 year old is having a terrible time.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

4. I'm so sorry to hear that.

Is there any chance he could do a program like Keystone High SChool? I enrolled my older boy when he had difficulty with high school; but he wasn't self-motovated to do the work.

[mopinko]

5. motivation is his problem also.

whether it is school work, chores, even learning to play an instrument. as soon as he hits a barrier- makes a mistake, or finds something difficult, or is told something unpleasant, boom, he is done. into his bulletproof shell.
i swear, come february, when he is 16, i am ready to sign him out of school, and send him off to work. his half sister manages a sandwich shop. i think it would do him good to have to perfect his ham and cheese skills, to make perfect french fries. and to get a check. he really needs to learn how to work. he is so smart, he skates so easily in so many things. but when he trips, he does not know how to get up.
he probably would get more options and more services from the school district as a drop out anyway.
he is a wonderful kid. but i suspect he will bounce from one job to another all his life.

there is no way i could have him around the house all day now. i have scraped my life back together a little, and really need to do what i have to do. at 52, i need to have a career before it is too late.

[Hannah Bell]

6. the bio on mandlebrot is bunk.

born 1924, he went to school from around 8 years to 11 years old, then as a teen. the main reasons for his periods of "homeschooling" were:

1. when he was due to start school, there was an epidemic & his mom didn't want to send him
2. his jewish family moved around europe because of the rise of european fascism.

he didn't "attend school but do poorly". that's completely made up.

here's what the man himself said:

"For this reason my mother became a doctor, and later became a dentist. Her sister was a doctor; in fact, almost everyone in the family, all the women in her family were doctors as well."

"On my father's side most of the men were scholars, they had, some had in fact no clear occupation, They were wise men who were supported by a group of faithful who worked for advice, leadership etc. My father however was from a different generation and became a businessman."

"My mother went to medical school before World War I. They had married shortly before, then they had a child, and during World War I had a very adventurous life because of all the different terrible things happening in Eastern Europe..."

"Shortly after World War I my parents lost their child in an epidemic, and then had two more sons: myself and a younger brother. This fact is important because my mother, as a doctor and a bereaved mother, had a great fear of epidemics. After a few years of very normal, very happy, problem-free childhood, the question arose: would she let me go to school? She was so afraid of epidemics that she didn't let me go to school."

"However, there was an uncle who was a very cultured man, but almost permanently unemployed, - life was very, very rough in Poland, who was hired to be my tutor. So for two years of learning reading and writing, counting and the alphabet, I was tutored by this man who was quite unskilled in the art of being a tutor or a teacher. He didn't think it was fun to teach me the alphabet, so I didn't learn it. At least I learnt the beginning and the end, but not the middle. He didn't think it was fun to teach me table multiplication, so I never learned - well, I know most of it but with glaring gaps. He taught me how to read maps, how to play chess, how to argue, how to hold opinions on various subjects which he felt strongly about and, all in all, it was quite a strange, strange, strange beginning to my education."

"Then this became impossible and I had to go to school, and I remember very little about school between, say- third grade and age eleven, except how strange and uncomfortable it was. The Republic of Poland had been reconstituted in 1918 after over a century of interruption and was very keen on having compulsory universal primary education, but this was not happening in the schools. It was happening in, how to say, schools, which were actually apartments - in residential buildings transformed into schools. These were extraordinary cramped quarters with an extraordinarily tight arrangement between teacher and students, but I have no recollection of either having been a good or a bad student, or of having had fun or not fun. School was something comparatively insignificant compared to the rest of my life, which was much more active."

"The major event occurred when I was eleven approximately, when we moved from Poland to France. My father had had this business in Poland, which was destroyed by the Depression... But moved to France, and then another very strange interruption occurred in my schooling. First I went to elementary school to finish learning French - we spoke French but not very well - so by the time I was finished with that year of studying I was twelve and half, say thirteen, and the normal age to enter high school was eleven. Therefore I started two years behind. And in the same way as my first two years were very strange and irregular, the schooling at high school was strange and irregular."

"For example, I went to a Lycee in Paris, I was two years older than most students, I was much taller, I was, I think, rather brash, and the teachers had an uncanny propensity, I felt, to pay as much attention to me as to all the rest of the class. Once again, I remember high school not as a kind of very regulated and difficult and tedious exercise, which many people remember it to be at that time in France. But (as) a time where very bright people were there just to talk sometimes about mathematics, sometimes about Latin, sometimes about French, or sometimes about some other interesting subjects."

"The professor of French and Latin in my first year at high school was a very scholarly man, who otherwise would have been a university professor I imagine. He had a passion for Paris and every Sunday took the class, or whoever wanted a class, on a tour in Paris. His idea was that Paris was worth a tour per year. Thus when it was finished he started again with a different group, and that provided me with knowledge of the older, nicer parts of Paris in extraordinary detail; much more than any guidebook could provide. Because he would explain the history, the people who lived there, the ups and downs of different neighbourhoods and how the life of the city would move from one place to the other. That came to very good use later on, on many occasions. But again, the main feeling was of being in school but not quite connected to school."

"Then the war came....In the meantime, my uncle had become well established and had a country house in the centre of France in a part called Correze, which is way in the hills and a very poor part of the country. We went to Tulle, the capital of Correze to high school and then I finished high school, jumping classes. But I don't remember high school as being classes. I just moved faster and after two years was back with people my age."

"The professor I remember most was the professor of French when I was in the first grade, which means between sixteen and seventeen. She was a very scholarly person also who decided early on that I wrote French well enough for my grade and that she was going to give me special difficult exercises in class and correct them in terms of the university rather than high school. But history and French were the most important topics involved. In the last year it was mostly mathematics, taught in a very, very tedious and organised fashion. That was the only year I remember as being well organised in high school."

http://www.webofstories.com/play/9599


so in fact, mandlebrot's "homeschooling" was from about 6-8. there was no "doing poorly". completely false. he was not "homeschooled after age 12". completely made up.

mandlebrot in fact came from a highly educated family & received an elite education (lycee), despite the dangerous times.

a number of other items on that list are similarly misleading. most misleading is the utter irrelevance of the upper-class education of an earlier era to the life prospects of average children today.

Is Emerson *your* neighbor? Are both *your* grandfather & father successful, famous painters? Is *your* father a historian, editor, & critic, the in-law of a famous novelist? Is *your child's* godfather a famous poet? Does Henry James attend *your* family's literary salons? Did *your* aunt marry into the Pierpont Morgan family? Were *your* parents both mathematicians in a "vibrant intellectual community"?

That most of the people on your list were or were not "homeschooled" has almost nothing to do with their fame a/o success. I have nothing in particular against homeschooling but this kind of false history doesn't speak well for its proponents.

[Maat]

8. This group is supposed to be a refuge for homeschoolers.

What are you doing over here?

****************Quote***************************************************************************************************************
The DU Homeschooling Group comes together with the purpose of sharing experiences, ideas, help, SUPPORT AND ENCOURAGEMENT for fellow homeschooling DUers.
************************************************************************************************************************************

You are certainly here to support homeschoolers. Go away.

[Hannah Bell]

9. i think correcting errors of fact = support & ideas. but if you're committed to teaching phoney

history, carry on.

[Maat]

11. Your attitude is obviously quite hostile, and I, for one, don't appreciate it.

Attitudes like that are not conducive the supportive atmosphere we like to maintain here.

Some of us homeschool our kids through a charter school. That's certainly not something that you support.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

13. Thank you for the info on Mandelbrot

When I originally posted this, 5 years ago, I cut and pasted from a site that was often a reliable source of information. I did not research each individual bio, and mistakenly concluded that they were all accurate. Sadly, the internet isn't the only source of misinformation, as perusal of just about any standard school history textbook will reveal.

The intent behind my post was to give homeschooling parents a few recognizable names of successful people to toss out when subjected to the typical bashing that anti-homeschoolers spout. Is Emerson my neighbor? Of course not, silly. However, I have contacts and resources at my fingertips that are every bit as valuable; and Emerson sits on our bookshelf when the need to refer to his work arises.
If you talk with homeschool parents, you'll find that many, if not most, are resourceful people who go far beyond their textbooks to instill a love of learning in their children, and teach them the self-discipline that is required to spend the rest of their lives educating themselves.

[Maat]

7. Hey, where's my very favorite author - Thomas Jefferson?

He was homeschooled also.:)

[Hannah Bell]

10. .

[Hannah Bell]

12. Born 1743.

In 1752 (age 9), Jefferson began attending a local school run by a local Scottish Presbyterian minister.

At the age of nine, Jefferson began studying Latin, Greek, and French; he learned to ride, and began to appreciate the study of nature.

In 1757, when he was 14 years old, his father died. Jefferson inherited about 5,000 acres (20 km²) of land and dozens of slaves.

After his father's death, he was taught at the school of the learned minister James Maury from 1758 to 1760... Jefferson boarded with Maury's family. There he received a classical education and studied history and science.<13>

In 1760, at the age of 16, Jefferson entered the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg. For two years he studied mathematics, metaphysics, and philosophy under Professor William Small, who introduced the enthusiastic Jefferson to the writings of the British Empiricists...

After graduating in 1762 with highest honors, he read law with William & Mary law professor George Wythe and was admitted to the Virginia bar...

Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743 <2> into a family closely related to some of the most prominent individuals in Virginia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson


TJ got the typical education for male children of his class at the time.

It didn't consist of "homeschooling" in any way resembling the modern version.