Another great post Sterlin. I used to work in a research lab with a PhD student who was only 18 years old. He was a child prodigy who got accepted into a university at the age of 11 and started classes at 12. He took a year off before starting his PhD work and was still done with the academic portion of it by the age of 18. I got to know him a little in the short time we worked together, but I learned very quickly that he was very bright, but not necessarily any brighter than anyone else that went through the coursework at the prescribed age, like the post-docs and professors. Talking further with him I realized that he was able to be so advanced at such a young age because he was homeschooled and was therefore unfettered by the traditional education route!

His parents were entrepreneurs and could therefore afford the time necessary to raise him in that way. He was well adjusted emotionally and had no problem socializing with people of any age group, including his peers, contrary to what I had been told about homeschooled kids and them being social outcasts. He was fearless about making decisions and one of the most confident human-beings I have ever met. Not braggadocious or putting on a front to impress, he was just truly confident, and KNEW he was doing at all times. All of the illusions I had been taught about homeschooling were shattered in looking at his example.

Fast forward to just a few years ago, I started talking to my future wife about having children and the idea of homeschooling them. I must say it was a hard sell, so I started doing tons of research and came across John Taylor Gatto. When I showed her some of his writings on the subject, the convincing still took some time, but she was on board as the evidence of its benefits were impossible to refute.

We're now happily married, I'm a stay-at-home dad and we're raising our daughter peacefully. Now that I know what I know, she will never see the inside walls of an institution without her specifically requesting to be there. She's a very bright kid, and at 2-1/4 is already counting into the teen numbers, has an impressive vocabulary and is in the process of recognizing written letters and learning the sounds that they make when they form words. She even recognizes a few words as symbols already. She's pretty good with spatial reasoning as well, but not quite where she is with the math and verbal stuff. This is not to mention how athletic she's become, running circles around many of the kids her age. In case you can't tell from the above, I'm a proud dad, and maybe a little biased ;).

But seriously, I'm of the opinion now that her flourishing is a direct result of the peaceful parenting (among other things, like proper nutrition during pregnancy and unmedicated birth). In addition to being bright, she may be the single most defiant human being I have ever encountered. Since this behavior isn't considered a challenge to our "authority" as parents, this unfettered independence of hers goes relatively unchecked (except for safety and feasibility issues of course).

That little scientist is therefore allowed to test the boundaries of the physical world, and so she is able to make sense of it in ways that other kids, like myself when I was even three times her age, who were raised with authoritarian methods, are unable to do. She simply has very little holding her back.

After seeing her example unfold before my eyes, and the countless others that I've met and read about, I'm convinced that we are systematically destroying the intelligence and creativity of our children by parenting violently and tyrannically. To make matters even worse, then we send them off to indoctrination camps to be brow-beat into submission for over a decade. For anyone on the fence about this, please do your research. You'll find all of the evidence irrefutable and you'll never think about this stuff in the same way again. You owe that to your children to at least look into it.