It’s pretty disorienting to me that smart people, secular people, particularly people in tech, view homeschooling as a high-status option now. I w

Why are tech people suddenly so into homeschooling?

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2025-01-14 16:00:04

It’s pretty disorienting to me that smart people, secular people, particularly people in tech, view homeschooling as a high-status option now.

I was homeschooled for 13 years, from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade—you can tell that about me because I have essentially the same skill stack as Rapunzel from Tangled—and let me tell you, at no time were my six siblings and I considered the cool kids on the block.

An academic freak who wins spelling bees.1 I was a two-time National Spelling Bee finalist in 2005-06. ESPN’s John Marvel once said he liked my odds for two reasons: 1) I was homeschooled and 2) I had a name he couldn’t pronounce.

A religious freak who believes in young-earth creationism. The earth is thankfully old enough to have forgotten the full-length country-western musical I wrote in high school called “Creation vs Evolution: The West of the Story”.

Mean Girls goes on to make sure we understand that Cady Heron (Lohan’s character) defies homeschooler stereotypes: she’s a well-traveled, broadly well-adjusted child homeschooled mainly out of necessity (her parents are roving scientists or something) rather than ideology. She’s an acceptable homeschooler - a unicorn!