Book Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
An impressive brief for home-schooling, with caveats. Part memoir,
part primer, this begins by recalling the events that precipitated
the decision to home-school. Penn-Nabrit graduated from Wellesley
and Ohio State University
Law School, her husband from Dartmouth, so both felt
qualified to evaluate the education their three sons were receiving
at an expensive all-male private school in Columbus, Ohio. They felt
the administration was not sufficiently committed to diversity and
did not try very hard to find qualified black male
teachers, role models the boys needed. Nor did they
appreciate being told that their desire to have their sons attend
Ivy League colleges was "unrealistic." Matters came to a head when
the headmaster objected to the Penn-Nabrits organizing a picnic
without his permission for other black parents and accused them of
being tardy with their tuition payments; twins Charles and Damon,
age 11, and Evan, 9, were expelled. Devout Pentecostal Christians,
the author and her husband wanted their sons to have a holistic
education that embraced faith, community, the arts, and sports, as
well as the regular curriculum; they decided to home-school. They
found graduate students and other qualified professionals to teach
subjects like mathematics, science, and foreign languages. Since
they ran their own business (a management consultant firm), they
could take the boys on business trips that exposed them to new
ideas, and they made sure their sons attended the ballet and
concerts, volunteered, and participated in sports at their local
recreation center. It wasn't all smooth sailing: the boys missed the
social life of a regular school and accepted the changes
reluctantly. Each chapter describing a portion of the program and the
kids' progress includes an afterward evaluating the results and
offering advice to other parents. The twins were accepted at
Princeton, and Evan at Amherst, but adjusting to college was not
easy, admits Penn-Nabrit, who offers a frank assessment of what went
wrong as well as right. Intellectually provocative reportage from
the home-education front.
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