My 19-year-old daughter, Kennedy Catherine McCain, just completed
her sophomore year of college, receiving her associates degree
with high
honors from Hagerstown (Md.) Community College.
Kennedy still burns with resentment over the single "B" on her
collegiate record. After being home-schooled
from third through ninth grades, she enrolled at
Highland View
Academy as a 14-year-old sophomore, graduating with
honors at age 16. She would have completed her college
associates degree at age 18, had she not spent a year in
Argentina in a full-immersion Spanish language program.
Did I mention she is working her way through school, earning
money to pay that part of her tuition not covered by
scholarships? When I tell people I have six children, they are
prone to ask how I expect to pay to send all those kids to
college on the meager earnings of a journalist.
Short answer: I won't. The kids can work their way
through, like Kennedy does. Also, I've suggested to my sons
that they should consider matriculating through the most
elite undegraduate program in the nation, the University of Parris
Island -- qualifying them for a chance
at free travel to exotic destinations like Iraq and
Afghanistan -- and then continuing their studies on the
GI Bill. My 16-year-old twin boys are somewhat skeptical of that
plan, which they fear won't allow adequate opportunity in
their preferred fields of study, girls and cars.
Bragging on one's children is an especial joy when the kids are
home-schooled, since Kennedy's achievements reflect credit
on her mother, who spent seven years teaching our daughter
at the kitchen table.
The success of home-schoolers is a refutation to the arrogance of
a government education bureaucracy that is prone
to assert, with the self-righteeous authority of
official expertise, that my kids and the estimated 1.5 million
other home-schooled students in America are being deprived of
something useful. My only regret is that more children
are not similarly deprived.
Since I only skimmed the
Department of Homeland Security's "Rightwing Extremist"
report, I'm not sure if they listed home-schoolers among the
looming domestic terror threats, but at least one prominent
anti-government radical is a proud home-schooling dad.
Wayne Allyn Root was the 2008 Libertarian Party vice-presidential
candidate and when I saw him last month at the Georgia LP
convention, Root spent most his time bragging on his
home-schooled 17-year-old daughter Dakota, a black belt in
martial arts who also
competes in international fencing:
Dakota has been in the sport only four years, but she is
considering attending college at Ivy League fencing powerhouses
such as Harvard and Columbia as well as Duke, Northwestern and
Notre Dame. There appears to be reciprocal interest. . . .
She has achieved scores of 2,240 on the Scholastic Achievement
Test (Dakota still hopes to break 2,300) and 31 on the American
College Test. . . .
Last November she traveled to Germany and Austria for
16-and-under World Cup tournaments. Dakota fenced especially well
in Germany, making the fourth round of pool play.
Showing that performance was no fluke, Dakota in April won
under-19 epee at the Pacific Coast Championships in Long Beach,
Calif. She was second in the senior epee, which was open to all
ages.
That's a head-turning rise through the ranks for a relative
newcomer. It's also a rise that could continue, perhaps even to
the Olympic Games, with 2016 as the likely target.
Please
read the whole thing.
