| | Can I object to the statement that "nearly every great mathematician" was homeschooled? It is patently ridiculous, even to a supporter of homeschooling. Here's just a few of the many famous mathematicians from the last few centuries who were not homeschooled: Isaac Newton, Leonhard Euler, George Polya, Carl Friedrich Gauss, John Venn, several of the Bernoulli family, Pierre de Fermat and Johannes Kepler. Off the top of my head, August Möbius was homeschooled only to the age of 13, and some mathematicians were born into European aristocracy who would never even think of allowing their children to be taught in a normal education system, which at the time would have been grossly inferior. Less hyperbole, please! [[User:PeterS|PeterS]] 21:00, 19 March 2008 (EDT) | | Can I object to the statement that "nearly every great mathematician" was homeschooled? It is patently ridiculous, even to a supporter of homeschooling. Here's just a few of the many famous mathematicians from the last few centuries who were not homeschooled: Isaac Newton, Leonhard Euler, George Polya, Carl Friedrich Gauss, John Venn, several of the Bernoulli family, Pierre de Fermat and Johannes Kepler. Off the top of my head, August Möbius was homeschooled only to the age of 13, and some mathematicians were born into European aristocracy who would never even think of allowing their children to be taught in a normal education system, which at the time would have been grossly inferior. Less hyperbole, please! [[User:PeterS|PeterS]] 21:00, 19 March 2008 (EDT) |
| | + | : Fine, let's look at your examples, several of whom would not be described as "great mathematicians"; others in your list who were [[homeschooled]]; and still more who were schooled but achieved despite it. Spell out the schooling of each of your examples and you'll find that nearly all of them fall in one of the categories I just identified, and hence my reversion.--[[User:Aschlafly|Aschlafly]] 21:54, 19 March 2008 (EDT) |