Posted on 05/23/2025 11:20:14 AM PDT by DFG
This week, Alisa Perales will graduate from Crafton Hills College in Yucaipa, Calif., with associate degrees in both math and multiple sciences. She's planning to study at University of California, Irvine, starting this fall and major in computer science.
She's also 11 years old. Honestly, she thinks the whole thing is pretty neat.
“It’s really exciting for me that I’m actually graduating at 11 with two degrees,” Alisa Perales tells PEOPLE. “It’s just cool.”
Alisa’s single dad, 51-year-old Rafael Perales, decided to shelve his law practice and homeschool his daughter full-time starting when she was only a year old. (The family was able to rely on a relatively modest inheritance after Rafael's parents died, which he says allowed them to purchase some land and generate income that way.)
“Alisa is innately brilliant. She's sharp. Everybody's noticed that she was born with a little something extra," he says.
Still, "she wasn't born knowing calculus, she wasn't born knowing [trigonometry]," Rafael tells PEOPLE. Getting from there to here — a college graduate at close to half the age of most students — was "constant work.”
They started with the the ABCs and singing songs. By 2½, Alisa was reading chapter books.
“It's just been step by step," her father says. "There's been no miracles. Everything has been step by step by step."
“When I first started doing it, people were like, 'Wow, you're going to stop being a lawyer to homeschool a 1-year-old?' " Rafael says. "They thought it was a big mistake. They didn't think that was really the way to go."
But he was sure it was "the right decision from the start," he says. "And looking back now, 10 years later, I have zero regrets.
(Excerpt) Read more at people.com ...
Is HE getting alimony? Or was there a 2nd inheritance...or insurance policy.
IF HE DOESN’T ALREADY-—HE NEEDS HER NUMBER
YUP
Associates Degree?
This sort of system is a little clumsy, but manages to condense eight years that likely contains 3-4 years worth of materials for someone who moderately applies themselves into six years, which is progress.
They do serve as a useful peg-mark to build the final two years of a BA or BS on without having to first worry about checking the high school box.
"...two associate degrees, one in math and one in multiple sciences. Her dad notes that if she stayed just one more semester, she would have earned two more degrees, in computer science and in physics."
That's impressive.
It might have been 5 or 6 days, per the article, but I get your point.
She seems happy, so that's great. But she could have learned to read by two, and so on, without so much work.
Thank you. I worked on it all night.
Just for the record, 8 to 4, 6 days a week is nothing extraordinary.
Plus, the brain is ready to learn languages at those young ages. It's like a sop. Especially gifted students, they are hungry and can learn to read French or German or any such language at very young preschool ages.
We can appreciate Olympians. Musicians, too. They will tell you the practice is grueling and they are free to leave if they decide that working at McDonald's is more fitting. But they won't when they know who and what they are.
...AND public school drag every one down to the same level.
“AND public school drag every one down to the same level.”
Wrong. My niece graduated HS with college credits.
Children have nothing to teach other children except bad habits.
My kids got all their school work done for the day in less than a couple hours in the morning.
They more than exceeded the state standards for completely their curriculum.
That left the rest of the day for field trips, social activities, or just plain playing.
So true.
There were more opportunities for activities and socialization than we had time for.
This girl learned because she WANTED to.
After homeschooling so many years and knowing so many other homeschoolers, I know the kids are not learning because *they're put on a brutal schedule*.
Sometimes the problem is keeping up with them and finding enough to keep the occupied and busy for what they're asking for.
Besides, once they learn to read, they can self teach themselves a awful lot if you just buy the books. If they're interested in a subject, they'll read whatever they can get their hands on about it. And it's not forcing them by any means..
Pow! You hit the nail on the head. Several times I've had to change my gameplan--do them a favor and don't underestimate!
Freedom!
Same!
Yes. My two oldest were very early readers as well, and they’d devour almost anything they could get their hands on.
The stuff they were interested in though, it was almost impossible to keep up with.
Public schooling artificially separates students by age. They never learn how to interact with people out of their age group.
Homeschooled students have a chance to mature far faster than public schooled ones do, held back by age and grades.
Your niece is the exemption
In the meantime millions of kids are being brainwashed
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