HOMESCHOOLED

A childhood in limbo, disfigured by a mother’s trauma.

“Once upon a time, there was a boy. The boy used to have friends, like any other kid. He went to school in the mornings. He lived in a place that was not exactly like any other place. But now the boy is no one, and he lives in a town called Nowheresville.” The child who wrote that story grew up to become a successful novelist; this memoir follows three novels. After the family moved from Indiana, to Plano, Texas, and thanks to newly passed homeschooling laws, Block’s mother decided to pull him out of fourth grade and educate him at home, though little attempt at teaching or learning beyond some math lessons and a deck of trivia cards was ever made. She professed to believe him a genius who would only be held back by the curriculum of school and who was too sensitive for its social realities. Never imagining how long this might go on or “what those lost years with Mom will become”—and desperate to pull his mother out of her anger and despair following the move—young Stefan assures his principal that he wants this, too. An eerie, brutally lonely horror movie of a childhood ensues, including an episode in which Stefan and his older brother (spared the homeschool option) are forced to crawl instead of walk when they are at home because their mother believes it will improve their handwriting and a protracted attempt to bleach Stefan’s hair back to baby blond using hydrogen peroxide. When Stefan finally demands to go to public high school, he faces obstacles ranging from intractable cystic acne to a suicide epidemic that will claim 19 of his classmates. While fully communicating the absurdity and frustration of his homeschool years, the author withholds judgment of his mother, eventually learning of the life experiences that aggravated what seems to be undiagnosed mental illness. For the lack of regulation of homeschooling that continues to this day, he has harsher words.

Like Tara Westover’s Educated, a compelling and horrifying account, leavened with flashes of rueful humor.