A primary concern parents often share with me is whether or not they will fail their children by homeschooling them. But there's a more tangible concern lurking here, and that concern is whether or not their children will be able to get into a good college.
If we don’t ask the right questions, we won’t get the right answers. So, let’s look at the college question a little differently.
What if we asked this question instead: what do the top colleges look for when choosing their students? Once we know the answer to this question, then we can ask the next question: how do we educate our children to meet this criteria?
What John Taylor Gatto Had to Share
To answer the former question, I'm going to repeat what John Taylor Gatto once shared at an education conference I hosted for him.
He said that he once asked a Harvard admissions officer what they looked for when deciding who to accept into their college. The officer replied that they looked for two things:
Applicants that they believed would become rich
Applicants they believed would become famous
Their reasoning was that these students—once they become rich or famous—would donate generously to the college because private colleges rely largely on endowments to survive.
For example, as of 2024, Harvard has an endowment of 53 billion.
The Next Question
So the next question to ask is what qualities would these applicants need to achieve future financial success or fame?
To answer this question, I looked at the traits of the rich and the famous to see which traits were in both groups. Here's what I discovered: in both groups, being a visionary and non-conformist as well as having courage, resilience, and perseverance were present.
Which poses a third question: if these qualities are what the top colleges look for, then how do I raise my children to have these qualities?
Do you get the idea? Instead of focusing on the goal of getting our children into a good college, let’s focus on educating children that a good college would want to choose.
For sure, we can say that a top college does not want a student who’s had a “cookie-cutter” education!
Whether our children decide to go to a top college or not is up to them, I think, but we want to educate them to have that option, if they should choose it. Here’s how we’ll do it:
Expand the Mind
Raise your children to love reading and to read difficult literature. We gain a lot of understanding, knowledge, and insight from reading.
The more your children can expand their minds, the more they have to draw from so they can connect unrelated things to birth new ideas. Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates—innovators of the postmodern world—were readers.
Ask yourself this, can a child who doesn’t enjoy reading, and therefore doesn’t read, become well-educated?
We underestimate the value of reading in a good education when we fail to give it its fair due.
2. Training in Good Habits
Train your children in the habits of perseverance and resilience. Perseverance means that we learn to continue the course of something until we complete it.
Resilience means that we spring back in the face of failures, mistakes, or disappointments. The easiest way is to refrain from coddling your children.
Exercise tough love with your kids and have high expectations of them because they are capable of great things. I don't mean that you should be harsh with your children, but when you see them struggling with something they are trying to do, resist the urge to quell their frustration.
The struggle is part of the learning process that will allow them to reach their goal. Your children need to learn that struggling while they are trying to reach a goal is normal. If they don't learn to accept the struggle and inevitable failures, they will learn to be quitters.
3. Embracing the Original
We learn to disregard our common sense and gut feelings because we are conditioned in school to become good conformists. We are not born this way.
Each child is a unique individual; they stand alone as a pure original, like a Monet painting or a work of Mozart. But the school system is not designed to address a child's uniqueness. It is designed to raise sheep who are easy to manage and control.
This idea of controlling the masses goes back to Ancient Greece; it is nothing new, and you shouldn't be surprised by it. Given the history of the world, it appears to be a fact of life.
Raising Non-Conformists
To raise non-conformists be respectful of your children's ideas, thoughts, and concerns so they gain self-confidence in their unique way of thinking.
Support them in believing in themselves because non-conformists are not necessarily rebellious people, but they are people who see things from their unique perspective, and they trust what they see.
They are not afraid to act on their visions either; they are people of courage.
Therefore, raise your children outside of the system, if possible. Homeschooling is your best option because you can tailor your children's education to meet their unique needs and interests and help them to develop the aforementioned traits.
What You Mustn’t Ignore
Lastly, keep your children away from devices with screens. Screen use will interfere with all of the above and undermine your efforts to raise exceptional children.
If you can succeed in raising non-conformists, children who love reading, who are persistent and resilient,—and I believe that with the right tools you can—then enrollment into a good college will become a natural consequence.
A New Perspective
Rather than worry about failing our children, why not put our focus on discovering how to raise and educate a child with the qualities the top colleges look for, because these are the qualities that will lead them to experience more fulfilling and productive lives.
My Story
I'll leave you with a brief story about my children. When my children were accepted into colleges that impressed my friends and family, I began to receive congratulations for my homeschooling success.
I felt guilty because I had nothing to do with the college acceptance process, literally. I didn't homeschool my children with college in mind! I just did the best job I could do given my circumstances, which weren't always easy.
So when I received congratulations for their success in getting into good colleges, it felt undeserving.
But my friends and family insisted on congratulating me, and that's when I realized that congratulations were certainly due, at least in part.
I had raised and educated children who had the vision, the confidence, and the determination to get into a good college. I could take credit for this, but the rest of the credit went to my children.
Alleviating the Pressure
Whether you have dreams of your children going to a particular college, the truth is that the quality of your children's character will determine more about their future happiness and success than which college they go to.
And once you really get this, it will take a lot of pressure off of you because you will never have to worry about "failing" your children, you only have to concern yourself about raising and educating them in the best way possible.
Don’t miss your free download, 6 Reasons Homeschooled Kids Have Better Social Skills.
Get a copy of Liz’s “could not live without” book, Education’s Not the Point: How Schools Fail to Train Children’s Minds and Nurture Their Characters with groundbreaking Essays on educating your kids by John Taylor Gatto, Dorothy Sayers, and Liz herself.
About Elizabeth Y. Hanson
Developing a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a “whole” child, based on tradition and modern research, Liz devotes her time to helping parents to get it right.
Liz is a homeschooling thought-leader, as well as the creator of two unique online courses, Raise Your Child Well: Preserving Your Child's Natural Genius by Laying a Solid Foundation During the First Seven Years and the Smart Homeschooler Academy: Homeschooling the "Whole" Child for a Well-Trained Mind and Character
As an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach, Liz has 23 years of experience raising children and working in education.
Liz is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.
"I know Elizabeth Y. Hanson as a remarkably intelligent, highly sensitive woman with a moral nature and deep insight into differences between schooling and education. Elizabeth's mastery of current educational difficulties is a testimony to her comprehensive understanding of the competing worlds of schooling and education. She has a good heart and a good head. What more can I say?”
—John Taylor Gatto Distinguished educator, public speaker, and best-selling author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. For a copy of The Short Angry History of Compulsory Schooling, click here.
