Teenagers Find Home Schooling More Satisfying and Exciting

By Izzy Lyman
July 15, 2002

Many teenagers have exchanged the dog-eat-dog, banal world of high school and middle school to pursue academic excellence at home, along with entrepreneurial endeavors, travel, quality time with their families and their dreams.

Here's how three fared this past year.

Miriam Anzovin, 17, is a self-motivated homeschooled student who also has something to say about the negative encounters that pass as "socialization" in most modern-day schools. She has been a homeschooler for three years and previously attended both private and public schools. She lives in Amherst.

Miriam, looping. Miriam would like to become Hollywood's first "Orthodox Jewish fight choreographer."

"The mindless self-interest of some teenagers I've met who attend high school, certainly does not make me want to go back. I found that when I was in school the cliques and social hierarchy bring out the worst in people. When I left school, it was as if somebody had yelled 'wake up already' at me. The things that get in the way of getting an education, like dating and parent bashing, were gone," notes Miriam. She is the middle-child in a close-knit Jewish family. Her older brother, Raf, was also homeschooled and founded a computer animation studio during his teen years. In addition to applying herself to traditional high school subjects like biology and literature, Miriam is a serious student of Hebrew and Judaic studies.

"Homeschooling also allowed me to practice my religion unimpeded by school rules and ignorant faculty members," she says.

She is learning Filipino martial arts and American kenpo karate, and plans to begin training in Krav Maga, the Israeli system of self-defense. Miriam would like to become Hollywood's first "Orthodox Jewish fight choreographer." She directed, edited, and starred in "Sisters of Fury," a short action film in which two warriors battle for a priceless artifact, and is currently at work on a second film.

As Miriam puts it, "I think that high school just puts off the inevitable in terms of organizing your life, being responsible, and learning how to be self-directed."

Naomi Haqq, 18, of Belchertown is the kind of young woman who would make many parents proud.

She has strong moral convictions, is employed as a hotel front-desk clerk and is following in her mother's footsteps by studying nursing. At age 16, she was accepted into the dual-enrollment program at UMass/Amherst and has accrued well over thirty credits and earned a 3.69 grade point average. Naomi's work ethic and faith were cultivated during the time she and her three younger siblings were schooled at home by her parents. While she holds to a philosophy that "homeschooling isn't for lazy people," she agrees that one of the advantages of the lifestyle is that it offers teenagers the flexibility to make their own schedule.

Naomi (right) has strong moral convictions, is employed as a hotel front-desk clerk and is following in her mother's footsteps by studying nursing.

Naomi Haqq's learning experiences have had an international bent. When only 14, she accompanied her father (Emmanuel Haqq) on a trip to India, where he engaged college-aged students in debates about science and Christianity. The endeavor fits his background; Dr. Haqq is a native of India with a doctorate in high energy physics from the University of Minnesota. He is also the pastor of Dwight Chapel in Belchertown. On this trip, father and daughter also vacationed in Italy for a week.

During her high school years, Naomi attended youth group meetings, worked at a college dining hall and played piano, but she didn't dance at a prom. Does she feel that she missed out on an adolescent rite of passage? Not really. "I went through a time when I wished I had more friends," Naomi admits. "But I played on a (public school) soccer team during my sophomore year and found the kids to be snobby and cliquish, even though I had been playing with many of them since seventh grade. Everybody seems to be the same in high school."

Wid Lyman—The word "flexibility" has tremendous appeal to Wid III, my number two son, who is sixteen.

This year, Wid had the opportunity to participate simultaneously on two sports teams in Bozeman, Montana.

This school year, Wid spent his mornings studying biology, grammar, Algebra II, and American literature with his father, Wid II (who will return to compete in the Ironman triatholon in Hawaii again this summer.) He often devoted his afternoons to snowboarding, motocross, ice hockey or paintball. Some of his other extra-curricular experiences, however, have a more educational bent. He also helped a group of veterans hang up American flags in downtown Amherst, Massachusetts, on 9-11, worked on a roofing crew, pumps gas at a service station and networks via the Internet with teen-aged home scholars from around the United States. Twice he has driven cross-country with his dad visiting places such as Niagara Falls, the UP of Michigan, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. This year, he had the opportunity to participate simultaneously on two sports teams in Bozeman, Montana. He was on a high school ice hockey team of which all his teammates attended public school, and he also participated on a high school basketball team of which all his teammates were homeschooled

Of the compare-and-contrast experience he had this to say: "I liked hockey more because I am better at it, and my teammates were appreciative of my skills. But I prefer being with the basketball people, because I had more in common with them. They had cleaner language and more trustworthy behavior. The basketball team never had to apologize to any hotel staff." (This last statement is a reference to an episode in which several of his fellow skaters, attending an away game, threw plastic containers of cream into a hotel's swimming pool.)

Several of Wid's basketball teammates from Montana are currently visiting Massachusetts. The homeschoolers are attending a basketball camp with him at Amherst College.

No doubt about it. These homeschooled teens are gung-ho about what they are doing, and, come fall, poised for another round of adventures in education.