Famous Homeschoolers

From The Link Homeschool Newspaper:

PEARL S. BUCK (1892 – 1973)

Author

Pearl S. Buck was born in Hillsboro, NC on June 26, 1892 to Presbyterian missionaries who moved to China when she was 3 years old. Buck learned the Chinese language and customs from a Chinese teacher and was homeschooled in English as a second language and other subjects by her mother and tutor until she began formal school at the age of 17. Buck’s mother understood her daughter’s need for a creative outlet and focused on her writing skills, encouraging her to write something every week. Buck began writing for missionary magazines at the age of 6 and, as a young adult, decided to become a novelist. Her works primarily displayed a sympathetic focus on life in China and in 1932 she won the Pulitzer Price for widely acclaimed novel “The Good Earth”, the story of the farmer Wang Lung's life. In her lifetime, Buck wrote more than 65 books in addition to hundreds of short stories and essays.

ANDREW CARNEGIE (1835 – 1919)

Steel Manufacturer/Philanthropist

Andrew Carnegie was born on November 25, 1835 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland in an impoverished, yet cultured, political home. Many of Carnegie’s closest relatives were self-educated trademen and class activists. At the age of 5, Carnegie refused to go to school so his parents kept him home where an uncle read to him out loud. Three years later, he started school but quit at the age of 13. Carnegie’s “education” was enhanced by Colonel James Anderson who opened his personal library to working boys. Carnegie was a “self-made man” intellectually, culturally and economically. He was the founder of the Carnegie Steel Company, one of the most powerful and influential corporations in the United States. Carnegie was also a widely respected philanthropist who, later in his life, gave away most of his riches to fund the establishment of many libraries, schools and universities in Scotland, America and worldwide.