Homeschooling for Excellence by David and Micki Colfax

This is the first post in my new series about books related to teaching, learning and homeschooling. (See my previous post for a description of the series.)

When I started homeschooling in the 1990s, it was nearly impossible not to have heard of Homeschooling for Excellence by David and Micki Colfax. The book was talked about and shared at practically every homeschooling meeting and conference I attended. The book was recommended to relatives, skeptics, and those who were new to the idea of homeschooling.

Why was the book so popular? Because at a time when most people still doubted whether children could receive an adequate education without attending school, David and Micki were boasting about how their homeschooled children had been accepted into Harvard (see The Harvard Crimson article, "Homeschoolers are at Home at Harvard").

I was just one of many parents who were happy to be able to present the book as evidence, saying, "Look! Here's proof! Homeschooling works!" The Colfax family gave the rest of us homeschoolers a rallying cry. If one homeschooling family could prepare their kids for such high levels of success, why couldn't we all? Reading their book helped us believe anything was possible.

Even now, when I search for the book online, I find people who continue to rave about it. Many consider it THE book to read if you're thinking about homeschooling. And why not? The Colfax kids weren't just accepted into college. They were super-achievers. The oldest son, Grant, graduated from Harvard University magna cum laude and went on to Harvard Medical School. In 2012, President Obama appointed him Director of the Office of National AIDS policy. His younger brother, John Drew Colfax, worked his way through Harvard Medical School after earning his MA and law degree at the University of Michigan. He is now an emergency medicine physician. Their younger brother, Reed, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and went on to Yale Law School. He's now a partner at Relman, Dane and Colfax.  The youngest child, Garth, was still being homeschooled when the book was written, and unlike his brothers he didn't end up at Harvard. He went to a junior college and currently works with a nonprofit organization helping people with developmental disabilities.

What I feel made the Colfax's book so notable, as well as controversial, was what it revealed about the way they ran their home school. They didn't rely on a prescriptive standardized curriculum or school-approved program, which many people still believe is the best and only way to effectively educate college-bound students. In fact, much of their time was devoted to homesteading, working hard on a family ranch in California. They were largely self-taught (autodidactic), learning what they needed to know when they needed to know it, an approach some would refer to as "unschooling."

Back when I read the book for the first time, I remember having mixed feelings about it. On the plus side, the book inspired me to attempt an educational alternative that wasn't simply a carbon copy of school at home. I realized "homeschooling" was a misnomer—"family-centered learning" was closer to what I had in mind. I started thinking about the world as our classroom, where everything we did could be viewed as a learning opportunity. It was very liberating, and I'm grateful that David and Micki were willing to expose themselves and their family to public scrutiny so that I could learn from their experiences.

And yet, I couldn't help feeling inadequate and overwhelmed when I compared what I had to offer my kids to what the Colfax family was doing. They were learning how to set up and run a ranch as a family business, while I was showing my kids how to knit a scarf and do their own laundry. Not only did I not know how to do what they were doing, I didn't even want to try. I remember thinking, I don't really care whether my kids go to Harvard or not.

I didn't want "getting into a prestigious university" to be the standard by which my kids would be measured and evaluated, but it felt as though that's where Homeschooling for Excellence had set the bar. The more I heard people talking about the book, the more I began to worry that it might not be wise to crow about the connection between homeschooling and Harvard. Having heard so much about how homeschoolers can get into selective colleges, would people start pointing to other outcomes as examples of homeschoolers who had failed to provide an adequate education?

I sometimes wondered how the youngest Colfax felt about his brothers' success and the book's popularity. I can't be the only one to have questioned whether Homeschooling for Excellence would have been written and widely recommended if Garth had been the oldest rather than the youngest child. While I don't doubt that his parents were equally proud of all their children, we live in a society that tends to judge people by their credentials.

I think that's why, after I finished reading Homeschooling for Excellence, I felt the need to develop my own goals for homeschooling, my own standards for evaluating whether we'd been successful. I confess I hoped my children would choose to go on to college, and I'm glad they all did, but "get into college" wasn't ever on my list.

In case you're curious, my goals for homeschooling ("Homeschooling for Life") are listed below. How might your own goals be similar or different than mine?

Homeschooling for Life—Our Family's Goals

• Read for pleasure and to obtain information. 
• Write well enough to connect with friends, record events in your life, and make your ideas known to the world.
• Speak clearly enough to be heard and understood when asking a question or articulating your thoughts.
• Calculate solutions to problems by working with the “universal language of numbers” and in this way explore ideas that can be expressed more effectively with numbers than with words.
• Experiment with materials in the physical world. Form questions, observe what happens, be tenacious but open-minded when looking for answers. 
• Think carefully and critically to solve real-world problems and avoid jumping to conclusions.
• Create something appealing to your heart and soul. See, hear, smell, taste and touch appealing works created by others.
• Locate yourself humbly within the grand scheme of things. Study enough geography, history, and social studies to place current events in context and empathize with people from different times and cultures.
• Care for others and yourself with compassion. Love wholeheartedly.
• Apply your talents to make this world a better place.