K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: In Which I Extract My Kid From the Clutches of Traditional Schooling.

So we took the lead from the online lessons that worked so well for Anthony over the summer, and for his new penchant for googling the shit out of animals, battles, and historical figures who catch his interest. Personally, I had ever heard of slave-making ants, but I walked out of my office one day to find that a mention of them in his encyclopedia of animals started him on an online research foray into the nastier sorts of crawling things. This was after he became fascinated by the shifts in Roman military gear from 100 A.D., to 400 A.D., to 1000 A.D. He has become very familiar with the websites where you can track the evolution.

So now he’s enrolled in an online private school. The school promises an individualized approach—we already know from experience that many of the lessons are designed to automatically adjust their pace to the needs of students working through online lessons. He’ll still work with a couple of online teachers, and my wife and I take on larger roles in monitoring his work and coaching him through the offline material. It’s as much a homeschooling effort with organizational and technological backup as it is a private school.

It’s an alternative to what we tried before, which didn’t work. And while there’s no guarantee that this is the “right” approach for Anthony, I have no doubt that it’s an improvement for my kid, whatever may work for others.

It would have been nice to have an option like this back when I was twitching and puking my own way through public schools in New York and Connecticut.

All is proceeding as I have foreseen.