A Modern Famous Home Scholar

 

Astra Taylor

In 2006 Filmmaker Magazine called Astra Taylor one of the “25 new faces to watch” in filmmaking. Taylor is a Canadian-American documentary filmmaker best known for her philosophically oriented films Zizek!, about the philosopher Slavov Zizek, and Examined Life, a series of on-the-move interviews with contemporary philosophers that attempts to make philosophy relevant to the man and woman on the street. Taylor grew up in Athens, Georgia and was unschooled (a child-guided variation of homeschooling) along with her three siblings. You can watch Taylor talk about her experience being unschooled at a recent lecture for The Walker Art Center. Taylor is married to Jeff Mangum of the popular indie rock band Neutral Milk Hotel.

A Modern Famous Home Scholar

 

Condoleezza Rice

Angelina Rice knew her daughter was special, but when she took a year off from her job as a high school music teacher to home school little Condoleezza she had no idea she was laying down the educational building blocks for the first black, first female and youngest Provost of Stanford University, and the eventual U.S. Secretary of State (under George W. Bush), the first black woman ever to hold the position. The woman Forbes Magazine would twice declare ”The Most Powerful Woman in the World” grew up in segregated Birmingham, Alabama studying French, piano, ballet and figure skating. She is currently a faculty member of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a Director of its Global Center for Business and the Economy.

A Modern Famous Home Scholar

 

Jedediah Purdy

Jedediah Purdy is a law professor at Duke University and the author of several popular books on American culture and history. His first book,  For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today, was published in 1999, when Purdy was a 24 year old law student at Yale University, and made him something of an intellectual and political celebrity. Purdy, who is known for his earnest demeanor and unabashed concern for things that matter, described the book as “one young man’s letter of love for the world’s possibilities.” Purdy’s parents were self-described hippies seeking an honest, simple, rural life when they moved from Pennsylvania to a farm in West Virginia shortly before he was born. They named their little boy after Jedediah Strong Smith, the famed mountain man and Western explorer of the 19th century. Purdy was home schooled until age 13, eventually making his way to Exeter and then Harvard University, before completing his law degree at Yale. A “wildly popular” teacher at Duke, Purdy recently finished a book on the nature and origins of private property.