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 ...
How many kids does she play with every week?
My homeschooling experience is similar. When my daughter wanted to go to public schools, she loved it. But she entered the 3rd grade at 6th grade levels and I pulled her out when her test scores Plummeted.
It was fun. Homeschool isn’t fun.
Now I have her back out. It’s a full time job, and I’m a single parent. I now live in an RV in the rural section of Arkansas to keep my bills so low that I can do it.
But yes, if you give school hours to a homeschool curriculum, they soak up the knowledge.
In our area the local church has lots of activities for kids.
Most of them are home-schooled.
From bottom-of-the-barrel People “Magazine” with way too many unexplained holes in this story to draw any reliable conclusions.
Dad is also a gifted educator it seem even though a retired lawyer.
She didn’t learn from dad. She learned from books.
where she hopes to unlearn everything her patriarchal father taught her and join anti-semitic Jew haters and learn how to burn her diplomas without harming the planet while wearing the same underwear for a month.
Last week, my grandson graduated from college. Next week he will graduate from high school.
His high school has classes in the morning and then busses students to the college for afternoon classes. The college classes are in lieu of high school AP courses
The biggest advantage of home schooling is no upper limit on what the kids can learn.
For bright, curious, hard working kids this is a major advantage over their peers.
Bonus points: They don’t have to be denigrated by teachers who think the smart kids are “privileged”.
More bonus points: They don’t have to be beaten up by hallway bullies who think they are “too smart” or “too white” or whatever....
She probably can’t even relate to other kids which I do not consider as a bad thing.
My two homeschooled nieces were so fraking busy socially, the stay-at-home dad was amazing. Between clubs, sports, choir, scouts, brownies, and on and on and on.
One is now a very accomplished doctor running her own clinic; the other is a writer and singer.
Once again, the Plandemic sent everyone home, and parents were able to win first hand just what the government indoctrination centers were doing. One of my favorite stories was when a university called all of the dorm students back to their dorms. All of the classes were still online. More than a few parents stated “why am I paying $$$$ for my kid to live in the dorm?
One other story. There was an Ivy League student who lived in South Korea. He was trying to register for his online classes. The online application had a mandatory checkbox for the vaxxine. He was not leaving South Korea. All of his classes were online. They refused to let him “attend” without proof of vaxxine.
He took his hard earned money elsewhere.
Smart self-educated people are immune to crappy teachers.
Yup—the educational establishment has tied themselves in knots with endless stupid rules that produce no value at best and are harmful at worst.
Some folks are beginning to notice.
Sounds like she’s missed out on her early youth, at least, for what, a couple of cheesy associates degrees?
My nephew was homeschooled and recently earned his PhD—all without taking on any debt. He is published and starting his new career in medical research.
I’ll bet Elon has her phone number, he loves off the chart smart peoples.
See post 4.
Home schooled kids often can learn more in a couple of hours that in school kids learn in an eight hour day because there is no wasted time.
Home schooled kids have plenty of play time as long as other home schooled kids are available to play with them.
Yup—the best thing about super bright youngsters is that “we have always done it this way” claims are ignored.
They want to find their own way.
In the case of most of our zombified institutions that is exactly what we need.
My three nephews all were/are home schooled. They consistently scored higher than public school kids in NYS required testing.
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