Actually it was 15. And most came from one family.

If, after all the explanations that have been given to you as to why it's important to know the past of a given field, you still say it's just "nostalgia", then I don't know if there's much hope for your development. Teachability is one of the prime characteristics of successful people. I should think that not wanting to fall into the pitfalls of things that have been tried before, or figuring out why they failed so your efforts don't duplicate those reasons, would be good enough reason to know about the past of CS, including some of these old programs.

Very interested as to which institutions define CS as mathematics. I have a 16-year-old son who is heavily into math, especially math theory, but good friends (one a string theory physicist for NASA) tells me for job security he'd be better off in CS, especially Security (the whole issue of the Education Debt Balloon aside). But my son is not totally sold on the idea because he loves the poetry of math theory. A college where it's considered a branch of mathematics sounds like a good bet for him.

If you really want to go there, then you should be castigating all Norwegians and Danish for the ravages of the Vikings. And all Italians for the actions of the Roman army. And those are nations, with status conferred by birth. Many people who are Christians today have ancestors who weren't, and many of those past Christians have descendants today who aren't. So hold the hate speech, k?

And there are people who overestimate the value of sleaze and dishonesty. And it hurts them--usually later, and usually in ways they can't even begin to understand. Madoff Enron

You're exactly right. And who could be more involved than the parents who are taking the job of educating their kids on themselves? And who could be more lazy than someone who takes advantage of the free government daycare for ages 5-18? Even unschooling parents can be highly involved. Parents who are constantly looking for opportunities for their kids; listening to them so that they can help them find more resources--those are the involved parents. If your child says something like "I wonder how the Mongol hordes handled traveling with women and children", then you go to the library, or a museum exhibit, and you find out. Or if they are amazed at fractals, then you find interesting, out of the way math books for them. Unschooling is *not* unparenting or unteaching. In its most effective form, it's more like coaching. It is great for kids that are particularly gifted. This is where you get people like Chris Paolini (author of Eregon). There are approaches to homeschooling that are very unschooly in the beginning, precisely to get kids excited and self-motivated about learning, and not for the little gold star or free pizza. But really, truly excited about learning for its own sake. Those approaches then get more structured as the child gets older. I also agree that something needs to be done about our schools. I thought that a full decade before my first child was even born. I've been waiting for 20 years for them to be fixed, but I decided not to sacrifice my own kids while waiting. So we homeschool. Do I have the necessary knowledge? A lot of it--and what I don't have I can hire out. There are tutors, co-ops, distance courses and courses on DVD. My oldest is 12 and is currently studying programming, formal logic, Latin (raises SAT scores, to be pragmatic), algebra, etymology, 9th grade general science. He's writing a novel and wiki articles for fun. He plays with his friends in the late afternoon and evening for a few hours every day; usually bikes or skateboards or sometimes baseball or football. I'm hoping he can start taking college classes in a year or two. He's in several clubs and will be doing Junior Achievement this year. And he was mostly unschooled until he was 10--taught himself to read at 5 and to multiply at 4. Which was one big reason I started looking at homeschooling. To equate unschooling with "making ignorance a virtue"--now that's ridiculous.

Good grief. The results on tests and entrance exams are such that colleges and businesses actively court homeschoolers. That's certainly not a case of "one random homeschooler being able to pass a test. Colleges are about money, and so are businesses. They would not be risking it on a large scale on a less than sure bet. I have known dozens of homeschoolers who have not only been accepted into university, but have graduated. One is now a tenured professor; one is an aeronautic engineer; several are RN's; several are in grad school and many are in business. The least "successful" one I know manages a chain hotel. And several have kids of their own that are being homeschooled. So my *experience* is quite a bit different than some of the prejudice that's out there.

Wow, what prejudice. My own kids have always been homeschooled. My oldest's best friend in the neighborhood is black. My next one's best friend is Latina, and so if my youngest's best friend. And according to standardized tests, they're all between two and four years ahead of grade level. They are in no way unusual to other homeschoolers I know.

Unfortunately a lot of what passes for gifted education today is presenting kids with MORE of the same boring stuff they just zipped through. What a reward for being smart: "Bored with that and finished it fast, did you? Here's your "gifted" "more appropriate" work: you get to have TWICE the workload! And of the same stuff that bored you in the first place!" It's like punishment for being intelligent.