Homeschooled<\/a>\u201d (Jan. 6, Hanover Square Press). <\/p>\nWhen he finally entered high school in ninth grade, he was woefully unprepared: a social outcast and a dummy who first report card was dismal. He had spent the previous five years \u201cpursuing his passions\u201d \u2014 as his mother liked to say \u2014 mainly reading paperbacks by the pool and spending hours by himself in his room. <\/p>\n
Block\u2019s mother had always been eccentric. She didn\u2019t believe in traditional medicine or schooling and thought, writes Block, that \u201cwhite people are capable of a mild form of photosynthesis\u201d and that \u201cear shape is secretly one of the most important determinants of whether someone will succeed in life.\u201d<\/p>\n
After his father, a psychologist, moved the family from Indianapolis to Plano, she became angry and distant. She spent her days in the house drinking wine, talking long-distance on the phone for hours and stomping around the house.<\/p>\n
He recalls his complicated relationship with his homeschooling mom in his new memoir. <\/p>\n
So when her little boy complained about school, she\u00a0grasped a solution that she felt would cure her listlessness \u2014 and repair their relationship.<\/p>\n
Her teaching style was unorthodox. The two did math together at the dining room table every morning, but, after that, the day was devoted to \u201ctwo general activities,\u201d writes Block: a project he chose and did alone in his room, and \u201cerrands\u201d with his mother. These could include bargain-hunting at TJ Maxx, catching a double feature at the cinema or working on their tans outside.<\/p>\n
Sometimes if Stefan complained enough about not learning anything, his mother tested his trivia knowledge in their swimming pool, dunking his head into the water when he got an answer wrong.<\/p>\n
Little Stefan only occasionally saw other kids. He signed up for Tae Kwon Do, but his father accompanied him, because his mother worried \u201cabout me alone in that \u2018violent\u2019 class.\u201d He also joined a Little League team, but his mom urged his father to coach. The one friend he had left from his elementary school stopped coming over.<\/p>\n
His mom tried to dye his hair blond so he would look as he had as a young child. Courtesy of Stefan Merill Block<\/p>\n
Along with being a personal story, \u201cHomeschooled\u201d is also a window into the Wild West of the homeschooling system in America and an indictment of it. <\/p>\n
When Block left his public elementary in 1990, Texas had only recently made homeschooling legal, thanks to a burgeoning fundamentalist Christian community who lobbied legislators for the right to educate their children outside of the supposedly corrupting influence of secular public schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Block writes that homeschooling was barely regulated. In Texas, \u201ca parent didn\u2019t need a high school degree to homeschool; actually, a parent could be a convicted felon, could be under investigation by Child Protective Services and still be within legal rights to \u2018homeschool\u2019 as they saw fit, without the threat of inspectors or social workers coming to check on the child\u2019s education or welfare.\u201d (That\u2019s still the case: Texas is one of the most lenient states for homeschooling.)<\/p>\n
By the time he started high school, Block was way behind his peers. Courtesy of Stefan Merill Block<\/p>\n
Block argues that homeschooling robs children of their agency, and gives them little recourse if things are going really wrong, Because \u201cto confront your homeschool teacher or to hurt them in ways they might never forgive is to risk losing not only a parent but also your entire childhood social sphere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stefan went away to college in Missouri and then moved to NYC to try and get some healthy distance from his mother. Courtesy of Stefan Merill Block<\/p>\n
He himself eventually crawled back up to academic standards, winning science fairs and becoming editor of his high school paper. Yet, it took him decades to untangle himself from his mother\u2019s needy gaze and to shed the loneliness he felt those five years trapped in the house with her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She was \u201cmy only teacher, friend, world entire,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n
He decided distance was the best solution. He went to college in St. Louis, Mo., and did all sorts of things that would make her reject him: He gained weight, drank beer, painted his nails, even wished he was gay, because he couldn\u2019t cut the cord himself. But she never would let go. He moved to New York City, and eventually published two novels. When his mom suggested she move closer so she could help Stefan and his wife with their new baby, he demurred.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry. I wish you weren\u2019t the light of my life, but I just can\u2019t help it that you are so wonderful,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019ve always been the whole reason for everything, like it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
Block now lives with his family in upstate New York. Dana McClure<\/p>\n
She eventually died in 2020 from lung cancer. <\/p>\n
In the aftermath of her death, Block obsessively reflected on their complicated relationship, and how she made him believe that he could do anything, no matter how delusional. <\/p>\n
\u201cHer love might have become the cage where I was raised, but it had also been the key to get myself out,\u201d he writes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nine-year-old Stefan Merrill Block hated his new school in Plano, Texas. It was boring, stifling. His homeroom teacher…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3104,163,49078,242,10548,49079,27,29,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-109759","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-education","10":"tag-homeschooling","11":"tag-lifestyle","12":"tag-parenting","13":"tag-postscript","14":"tag-texas","15":"tag-texas-headlines","16":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}