Wednesday 2 March 2011

Einstein, the famous home educated kid

I have mentioned here before that at one time I was quite involved with the gay scene, forty years ago back in the days of the GLF. One of the curiosities of the more militant gays at that time was that they were very keen to prove that practically every famous person in history had really been gay. Any character who came up, from Napoleon to Alexander the Great, Hitler to Jesus, would be claimed as gay. I have in recent years noticed the same tendency on the part of home educators to pretend that a lot of famous and successful people were in fact educated at home. Almost invariably, the list of such people is headed by Albert Einstein.

Now some of the people who are supposed to have been home educated might have spent a year or two being tutored at home or had a governess or something. C. S. Lewis often turns upon these lists, due to his having started school at eight instead of five. Others were born before schooling was common or lived in an area where there really were no schools. In the case of Einstein though, there can be no possible reason for pretending that he was educated at home. Shortly before his sixth birthday, Einstein was enrolled at a Catholic primary school. Three years later he began attending the Luitpold Gymnasium, where he stayed to the age of fifteen. When his parents moved to Italy in 1894, Einstein stayed at the school in Germany for a while, before following his parents, who had now moved to Switzerland, and at the age of sixteen applying to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, from which he later graduated.

I suspect that many minority groups play this game of 'Lots of famous people were gay/Freemasons/Jews/Home educated'. Home educators, are definitely a little bit over the top about it though. I am afraid that the claim that Einstein was home educated has caused a good deal of amusement among those who know the value of schools. He had a brilliant mind, but it was developed and cultivated not by home education but by the rigorous educational system operating in late nineteenth century Germany. He was a product of formal schooling.

9 comments:

  1. True, though he himself had some pretty harsh things to say about schooling.

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  2. Yes, he certainly did not like or enjoy school and I think that it is reasonable to draw attention to the things he said on this subject. It's a bit different from being home edcuated though. Perhaps people get him muddled up with Thomas Edison, another famous brainbox, who genuinely was home educated.

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  3. old webb says -I was quite involved with the gay scene,

    Where you gay Webb?

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  4. 'Where you gay Webb?'

    Not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean 'Where was I gay'? or did you mean to say 'Were you gay Webb?' In other words are you enquiring as to the temporal or spatial location of my putative gayness?

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  5. Old Webb says-In other words are you enquiring as to the temporal or spatial location of my putative gayness?

    you been with the english teacher again Webb is that what you learnt yesterday?

    OMG the grammer was wrong! answer the question Webb!

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  6. You didn't mention Agatha Christie! although she did attend finishing school, but not until the age of 16.
    “I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas". How right she was!

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  7. "I suspect that many minority groups play this game of 'Lots of famous people were gay/Freemasons/Jews/Home educated'."

    Famous people with Asperger Syndrome (that's never actually been diagnosed) is another good example of this.

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  8. 'Famous people with Asperger Syndrome (that's never actually been diagnosed) is another good example of this.'

    Yes and Einstein has been claimed by this group as well!

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  9. Hahahaha, I had a dangerous tendency to enjoy and tottaly agree with your coments. It irks me! I'm wating something that can make me have a counter argument to start a debate with you.

    Other things that comes with the idea of finding homeschoolers everywhere is to call everything "school" as one brick, so Jesus school could be the same thing that a XXI century school, for example. Grrrr

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