Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 15, 1993 TAG: 9306150395
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Consider Albert Einstein. He spent his first five years of schooling at a Catholic school in Munich. In 1889, at age 10, he transferred to the Luitpold Gymnasium, also in Munich. His five or six years there were followed, after a break in Italy, with a year at the cantonal school at Aarau, Switzerland. Subsequently, he enrolled in a four-year program at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School (also known as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in Zurich, graduating in 1900. In 1905 he was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Zurich for a thesis on "A New Definition of Molecular Dimensions." As was common practice at that place and time, the Ph.D. award was based upon the thesis he submitted and did not involve formal enrollment in graduate school. The claim that Einstein never attended school is flatly incorrect.
Each of the other three figures had varying degrees of formal schooling. John Philip Sousa attended school until enlisting in the Marine Corps at age 13. Margaret Mead was educated at home until her high-school years, by a grandmother who was a certified teacher. She graduated from Barnard College and went on to graduate school. Even Abraham Lincoln attended school in Kentucky during a year or two of his boyhood.
Ms. Crockett's letter raises an interesting question. Is the "fact" that Lincoln, Einstein, Mead and Sousa never went to school typical of the "facts" taught in some home-school settings? BRIAN DENNISON BLACKSBURG
by CNB