Homeschool U.
MASERATI, SARAH A.
Homeschool U. Patrick Henry College will offer higher education aimed at the homeschooled. BY SARAH A. MASERATI WITH WELL OVER a million American children homeschooled, and the number growing...
...BY SARAH A. MASERATI WITH WELL OVER a million American children homeschooled, and the number growing steadily year after year, homeschool advocates are turning their attention to higher education...
...To prepare students, a rigorous academic program is planned with little room for electives...
...And it has succeeded in attracting superior students: Their average SAT score is 1207, well above the national average...
...For their part, Farris and his fellow advocates were frustrated by their interactions with liberal staffers who were unsympathetic to their causes...
...The students will function, in effect, as off-site interns, telecommuting from Purcellville...
...Students will attend weekly town hall meetings, where they will be exposed to a wide range of speakers and debate the issues of the day...
...Patrick Henry College is largely the brainchild of its president and chief fund-raiser, attorney Michael Farris, a leader of the homeschooling movement since the 1980s...
...Juniors and seniors will take comparative politics, international relations, state and local government, and public budgeting and finance...
...We are aware of global issues...
...In fact, homeschooled students tend to have had widely varied experiences...
...Some have banded together to found Patrick Henry College, an evangelical Christian school due to open its doors at a brand new campus in Purcellville, Virginia, this October...
...We hope to train our students to have just that...
...At the same time, in keeping with its mission to produce “virtuous leaders,” the school will require daily attendance at chapel...
...I haven’t met one person here whom I’d describe as an isolationist...
...We have all been really involved in our communities,” says incoming student Brian von Duyke...
...He also hosts a daily radio show for homeschoolers, serves as interim pastor of a church, and is chairman of the Madison Project, a political action committee...
...The college will begin with a fulltime faculty of nine, all of whom will have earned Ph.D.s by the spring of 2001...
...And in an attempt to avoid the typical college dating scene, which Farris calls “morally bankrupt,” Patrick Henry will institute a strict policy: Students who are interested in each other must notify their parents and adhere to their parents’ rules of courtship...
...In their first two years, students will follow a core curriculum including history, rhetoric, the Old and New Testaments, biblical reasoning, and computer science...
...The almost 80 students in the first entering class, most of them products of homeschooling, are currently getting acquainted through Internet chat groups...
...The aim, Farris says, is “to help produce a professional career path that will make a difference and have an impact on our country...
...Critics charge that so small and singleminded an institution can’t foster intellectual breadth, but Farris affirms his commitment to creating a vigorous exchange of ideas...
...Once the second major, classical liberal arts, receives state certification, students in that program will take three semesters of ancient Greek and write a novel...
...I get more and more excited every day about how positive this thing can be...
...It helps that Patrick Henry, launched with contributions from the Home School Legal Defense Association and private donors, will cost students only $15,000 a year, including room and board—about half the cost of other private colleges...
...The new college’s motto: “For Christ and for Liberty...
...They are about to embark on studies designed to ground them in the history and philosophy of the West and to prepare them for the real world of government through a unique “apprenticeship” link to Capitol Hill...
...As founder and president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, he spearheaded the successful effort to make homeschooling legal in all 50 states...
...This is a free environment...
...Another line of criticism is one to which homeschoolers have become accustomed: that Patrick Henry students will be shy and antisocial because of the sheltered atmosphere of the college...
...We got a lot of calls from Capitol Hill asking for sharp homeschooled kids to fill staff positions...
...those who apply to Patrick Henry College are required to write an essay about their community activities...
...What [legislators and staffers] were looking for and what we needed were kids with strong academic backgrounds and a solid conservative political philosophy...
...And they intend to put their students to work...
...In the apprenticeship program at Patrick Henry, juniors and seniors—all of whom, initially, will be majoring in government—will write position papers requested by members of Congress and others in local, state, and federal office...
...The idea for the college, Farris explains, grew out of his lobbying work with members of Congress...
...The emphasis on writing will be Patrick Henry’s hallmark: Students will write 27 research papers in two years...
...And Farris practices what he preaches: His own ten children are homeschooled...
...Sarah A. Maserati is an intern at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
Vol. 5 • August 2000 • No. 47
