This is exactly why I am so grateful I was homeschooled. The love of learning I received, the feeling that learning is FUN for its own sake, the insatiable curiosity I have developed, it is unparalleled. I was homeschooled from K-5 and spent year 6 in a Rudolph Steiner School, and 7–12 in a public “selective” school for the academically gifted. And I indeed performed extremely well, and still do — but I absolutely credit my having been homeschooled during my formative years, as giving me that joy in learning that my peers in public school seemed to mostly lack.

Even how I got into the selective school, is telling. The day of the selective test my parents told me “here’s something fun and different for you to do” — I’d never done a test like that before, I was like “wow cool, this will be fun”, I sat the test and enjoyed the whole thing. And I got into the selective school of my choice. No stress, no studying. Meanwhile my friends at the school told me they had been tutored for over a year before the test, and stayed up the night before crying from stress.

I am far from a conservative or a Christian, but if I ever have children I will 100% try to homeschool them during primary school, because my most beautiful memories are from that time. And the spark lit in me then burns brightly to this day.