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MORNING BY MORNING by Paula Penn-Nabrit

MORNING BY MORNING

How We Home-Schooled our African-American Sons to the Ivy League

by Paula Penn-Nabrit

Pub Date: Feb. 25th, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50774-4
Publisher: Villard

An impressive brief for home-schooling, with caveats.

Part memoir, part primer, this begins by recalling the events that precipitated the decision to home-school. Penn-Nabrit graduated from Wellesley and Ohio State University Law School, her husband from Dartmouth, so both felt qualified to evaluate the education their three sons were receiving at an expensive all-male private school in Columbus, Ohio. They felt the administration was not sufficiently committed to diversity and did not try very hard to find qualified black male teachers, role models the boys needed. Nor did they appreciate being told that their desire to have their sons attend Ivy League colleges was “unrealistic.” Matters came to a head when the headmaster objected to the Penn-Nabrits organizing a picnic without his permission for other black parents and accused them of being tardy with their tuition payments; twins Charles and Damon, age 11, and Evan, 9, were expelled. Devout Pentecostal Christians, the author and her husband wanted their sons to have a holistic education that embraced faith, community, the arts, and sports, as well as the regular curriculum; they decided to home-school. They found graduate students and other qualified professionals to teach subjects like mathematics, science, and foreign languages. Since they ran their own business (a management consultant firm), they could take the boys on business trips that exposed them to new ideas, and they made sure their sons attended the ballet and concerts, volunteered, and participated in sports at their local recreation center. It wasn’t all smooth sailing: the boys missed the social life of a regular school and accepted the changes reluctantly. Each chapter describing a portion of the program and the kids’ progress includes an afterword evaluating the results and offering advice to other parents. The twins were accepted at Princeton, and Evan at Amherst, but adjusting to college was not easy, admits Penn-Nabrit, who offers a frank assessment of what went wrong as well as right.

Intellectually provocative reportage from the home-education front.