A Modern Famous Home Scholar

 

Tim Tebow

Former All-American and Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Florida, Tim Tebow led the Gators to national championships in 2007 and 2009. He was drafted by the Denver Broncos in 2010.  Tebow was born in the Phillipines, where his parents were Christian missionaries, but spent most of his childhood in Florida, where he was home schooled along with his siblings. A 1996 Florida law allowing home schoolers to play on the sports teams of their local public school enabled Tebow to play for his local high school and lead them to the Florida state championship, while being twice named Florida’s Player of the Year. Other states have since moved to pass similar laws allowing home schoolers to play on public school sports teams, including in Alabama, where the pending bill is called the “Tim Tebow Bill.” Tebow has always spoken highly of his home schooling experience and seems to enjoy confounding stereotypes of home schoolers. After being asked how he felt about being the first home schooler nominated for a Heisman Trophy, Tebow replied, “That’s really cool. A lot of times people have this stereotype of home schoolers as not very athletic – it’s like, go win a spelling bee or something like that – it’s an honor for me to be the first one to do that.”

A Modern Famous Home Scholar

 

Sunaura Taylor

Sunaura Taylor is an artist, writer and activist for animals and the disabled. She taught herself to paint while being unschooled by her artist mother and musician father in Athens, GA. Taylor has arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, a rare congenital joint disorder that prevents her from using her legs or arms, and believes the disease was caused by the toxic effect of contaminated waste illegally dumped by the U.S. Military near her birthplace in Tucson, Arizona. Using her mouth, Taylor paints extraordinarily vivid and moving portraits of her subjects, primarily people with disabilities and animals, intending to raise philosophical and political issues surrounding disability/normalcy, personal identity and animal ethics. She appears in the film Examined Life, by her sister Astra Taylor (see earlier blog), discussing disability issues with the well known American philosopher Judith Butler. Taylor has won several awards for her work, including the Joan Mitchell Foundation award in 2008, and was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered.