And finally, the cultural reasons. Since the 1990s, there has been a group of symphony newcomers who give the lie to the classical-is-only-for-old-folks myth: babies. In the 1990s, scientists introduced the “Mozart Effect”—a theory that got popularized as “classical music makes kids smarter.” While it turns out not to be quite true, the number of pregnant women, new parents, and schoolteachers racing to buy classical music soared through the roof.

  Even better, policymakers bought in. Since 1998 in Florida, all state-funded preschools have had to play some classical music every day. In 1998, Governor Zell Miller of Georgia proposed spending $100,000 a year to give classical CDs or tapes to every child born in the state. Just gave birth? Your maternity ward is likely to pack you off with not just a complimentary diaper and a can of formula, but also Classical Lullabies for Bedtime.

  And finally, the nail in the coffin of the coffin of classical music may be groups like Bond, an all-female classical quartet who sport more skin on their album covers than is necessary to play the cello. This kind of crossover group is bringing classical a whole new potential audience.

  So no swan songs just yet. Classical enthusiasts should be buying up classical CDs now, while they are on sale, because the stores may be more crowded soon given the demographic, technological, and cultural changes that are likely to pump up their fan base. Yes, orchestras might have to sell more single tickets than they used to, and they might have to give up up-front recording fees in favor of (large) royalties from digital sales. But the Neo-Classicals are coming. It’s the best news classical music’s had since Mozart shortened his first name from Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus.

  PART XIV

  Education

  Smart Child Left Behind

  Kindergarten Hold-Backs in America

  One of my favorite TV shows in the 1990s was Doogie Howser, M.D. It was the intellectual side of the American Dream—if Doogie was smart enough to finish Princeton at 10, then damn the conventions, he could be a Teenage Surgeon. America rallied around young, bursting geniuses who tore through the educational system. Carl Sagan finished high school at 16. Stephen Hawking graduated Oxford at 20. Hell, Mozart toured at 6.

  Alas, no more. The biggest trend in education today is the opposite: holding kids back. And the “smarter” they are (or the more likely they are to succeed, statistically speaking) the greater their chances of being delayed.

  It’s called “red-shirting,” after the practice of keeping college athletes out a year while they grow bigger. A U.S. Department of Education report issued in 2005 suggested that nearly 10 percent of American students in kindergarten were actually eligible to have enrolled the year before.

  Who’s doing this? The typical red-shirted child is a boy, with white, well-educated parents. So well educated that they know how good it feels to be at the top of the class—and they want that for their children, even if their children are currently smaller, less advanced, less developed, or less capable than their peers. So—ever the problem-solvers—they sign them up for peers who are one year younger.

  It’s particularly popular in private schools and among the well-to-do. An analysis of Connecticut education data showed that wealthy districts red-shirt at rates up to 20 percent, while low-income district rates are 2 to 3 percent.

  Once it starts, it’s hard to reverse. Soon, even if you’re not a hyper-competitive parent, it feels neglectful not to hold your child back because if you enroll him in kindergarten at 5, you’ll be subjecting him to classmates a full year older. Ironically, of course, the more families do it, the less competitive advantage there is. One observer has called this phenomenon the Kindergarten Arms Race.

  Perhaps even more ironically, it doesn’t seem to work. Most studies of red-shirted students have concluded that they do no better than their younger classmates in the long term, and that any short-term gains disappear by third grade.

  From a trend-spotting perspective, Smart Boys Left Behind would be interesting if only to underscore the widening gap between America’s haves and have-nots. As though low-income students didn’t already have enough challenges competing against privileged students—what with their college-educated parents and SAT prep that began in the womb—now the lower-income students are also a whole year younger.

  But in fact, Older Kindergartners are an even bigger trend than just Elite Boys. Below the layer of kindergartners whose parents hold them back for personal reasons, there is a solidly growing group of students who are being, well, pink-shirted—by the schools—for institutional reasons. If red-shirting means deliberately holding back eligible 5-year-olds from kindergarten, what the schools have been quietly doing is changing who is eligible.

  In the past twenty-five years—in reaction to bold new standards in the 1980s that aimed to make America’s elementary schools more rigorous—nearly every state in the union rolled back its kindergarten cutoff date from December to about September, effectively edging the younger 5-year-olds right into next year’s class. In some private schools, kindergartners have to turn 5 as early as April or May of the year they want to start. It’s a way to be sure that the schools, too, are more “successful”—at least in the measures people look at.

  And so with virtually no central planning, or acknowledgment, America has been rolling back the start of formal education.

  The Chicago Tribune has called it “the graying of kindergarten.”

  Whereas virtually nobody used to be 6 in kindergarten, now a serious chunk of children are, including nearly 1 in 5 boys.

  Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, unpublished tabulations

  Does anyone care, besides the parents who have to pay for an extra year of day care, and teachers who might see more roughness at recess? Extrapolated out, it could mean very big things for America. Because you can delay the onset of school, but unless you also unhinge the other life events that are lashed to age, you could have some previously rare, and unexpected, results. For example:

  Middle School Sex. Researchers tell us that the average age at which Americans lose their virginity is 16.9. So if that used to mean tenth grade, now it will mean ninth. Look for a national outcry in the coming years about how middle-schoolers are having sex!

  Eleventh Grade Soldiers. One of the tidy things about having young people graduate high school at 18 was that it set a clear bar for adulthood in terms of legal responsibility, voting, and military service. But now, if boys don’t graduate high school until 19, the next time there’s a draft, the Draft Board will come looking for America’s eleventh-graders. How well will that go over? With those hyper-cautious parents, in particular?

  High School Voters. We won’t need mock national elections in high school—we’ll need real ones. Maybe presidential candidates will have to target Get Out the Vote initiatives to high school superintendents.

  Twelfth-Grade Rapists. If two high school senior sweethearts—he, 19; she, say, 17½—have sex, he could be convicted of statutory rape. And no juvenile hall for him—he’s a full-fledged adult.

  Of course, one could argue that the aging of schoolchildren, especially boys, is quite good news. Since it’s well known that “girls mature faster than boys,” maybe a little red-shirting for boys will at long last even the scales. And since girls are far outperforming boys in terms of college enrollment and graduation, maybe red-shirting is as good a way as any to get boys back on track.

  And you can certainly understand parents who want an extra year with the children they cherish. What loving parent doesn’t look at Junior in the graduation cap and gown, and wonder where all the years could possibly have gone? Especially in this age of fertility treatments, I know that lots of parents feel they worked very, very hard to get their children, and they are not about to give them up one year sooner than they must. And from the children’s point of view, too, many of them are being given a great gift, in terms of the extra year to mature, the chance perhaps to shine, the chance perhaps not to be bullied. Arguably, that’s as important to one’s education as algebra.

  But, schools of the future, plan on more parking spaces. We may need them in eighth grade.

  America’s Home-Schooled

  Several trends are coming together to produce a growing crop of graduates from “Your Home HS”—as the home-schooling movement is taking root in a significant way. Once regarded as an oddball idea, home-schooling is gaining currency as just about the best way to bring up kids in this crazy online world.

  What motivates parents who home-school their kids? Maybe they don’t think their public schools are any good—a lot of Americans are down on the system. Maybe they are unhappy with the drugs, weapons, and other dangers in school. (America has more school shootings than any other nation.) Or maybe they want more of a religious education than they can get in American public schools, and a little shelter from troublesome theories like evolution. In this world of adoring parents who don’t want to let go of their kids, what better way to intensely enjoy them than to never let them get on that school bus?

  So home-schooling in America is on the rise. After drawing just a couple of thousand devotees in the early 1970s, when the modern home-schooling movement was born, the number of home-schooled children in America grew almost 30 percent between 1999 (the first year the U.S. Department of Education took a serious look at this) and 2003—from 850,000 students to 1.1 million.

  That surge reflected a leap from 1.7 percent of the U.S. student-age population to 2.2 percent. While 2.2 percent may still seem like small potatoes in a student population of over 50 million, home-schooled kids in America actually outnumber charter school and voucher students combined.

  And yet, who ever talks about the home-schooled?

  It may be time. Whereas home-schooling was illegal in most states when President Reagan took office in 1981, now it is legal everywhere. Hundreds of organizations, Web sites, and conferences have sprung up dedicated to encouraging and supporting home-schooling. The creation and marketing of textbooks, curricula, videos, and other home-school-centered educational materials is worth an estimated $850 million a year. Major bookstores, movie theaters, and museums now offer special, targeted discounts to home-schooling families.

  Source: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Statistics, 2003

  Even America’s colleges, which generally demand strict adherence to requirements regarding uniform transcripts, test results, and applications, have bent the rules to accept parent-described curricula, and student portfolios, in applications from home-schooled youth. In 2000, only 52 percent of colleges had formal policies for evaluating home-schooled students; by 2005, 83 percent did. It didn’t hurt that that same year, a study came out showing that home-schooled students score 81 points higher than the national average on the SAT.

  The movement has also gained ground thanks to some home-schoolees of national prominence. Although home-schooled youth are barely 2 percent of school-age kids nationwide, they are 12 percent of finalists in the National Spelling Bee. In three of the last seven years, home-schooled students won the National Geography Bee. (The 2002 winner was 10, the youngest in the Bee’s history.) In 2001, a home-schooled boy from Montana finished high school at age 15, but didn’t feel he was ready for college. So instead he wrote a novel, Eragon—which became a best-selling book, and in 2006 was released as a movie starring Jeremy Irons. Even “lonelygirl15”—for a while the top-rated videoblogger in the world—pretended to be a home-schooled American teen.

  So increasingly, as a nation, we’re cool with home-school. In 2001, 41 percent of Americans said it was a good thing, up from just 16 percent in 1985.

  Who are they who do science in the backyard, and math at the dining room table or in the supermarket?

  More than three-quarters of home-schooled children in the U.S. are white. Sixty-two percent come from homes with at least 3 siblings—which means that parents who home-school their kids really like children to begin with, or that the synergy of a multi-student “class” makes home-schooling all the more attractive. (Imagine the sibling rivalry in those classes.)

  While the occasional home-schooling family is superrich—and using home-schooling to accommodate child acting careers, worldwide sailing trips, and what-have-you—54 percent of home-schooling families have incomes of $50,000 or less. Nearly 80 percent earn $75,000 or less.

  Over 40 percent of home-schooled students live in the South.

  But while the prevailing cliché of home-schooling families is that they are Christian, conservative, and creationist—and it is true that 60 percent of the organizations listed on the Home School Legal Defense Association Web site have Christianity in their mission—the latest U.S. Department of Education study found that only 30 percent of home-schooling parents had as their main reason the intent to teach religion or morality. A comparable 31 percent said their main reason was to get their kids out of negative school environments (be it safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure), and another 16 percent said they were dissatisfied with schools’ academics.

  So while many home-schooling parents don’t want their kids learning evolution—or learning from “government schools” generally—today home-schooling is getting a boost from all kinds of parents who just generally think they can do a better job. And now that the Internet has made it so easy to access thousands of lesson plans—as well as to ease the potential isolation that comes with learning at home—it may be that they can.

  The implications are widespread. First, there’s a growing industry for home-school retailers—and perhaps especially non-Christian ones. According to the 2003 federal study, fully 77 percent of home-schooling families rely on home-school-specific companies for their curricula, texts, and other educational materials.

  Second, look for increasing litigation and legislation regarding home-schooled children. Already there are court cases in which a home-schooling parent is alleged in divorce proceedings to be “neglectful,” and veterans benefits are denied to home-schooled 18-year-olds because they are not in approved educational institutions. In 2005, Senator Larry Craig of Idaho introduced the “Homeschool Non-Discrimination Act,” intended to put home-schooled youth on equal footing with other students for purposes of scholarships, grants, benefits, and other government aid.

  In addition, look for increased calls to regulate home-schooling. As of 2006, only six states “highly” regulate the practice, meaning they require parents to notify authorities, submit achievement test scores, and in some cases have state curriculum approval, parental teacher qualification, or home visits by state officials. On the other hand, ten states require absolutely nothing—not even notification to a school system that home-schooling is happening. One would think that the latter situation might result, at a minimum, in an undercounting of students getting educated, or an overcounting of students “missing” from the system.

  As the movement grows, home-schoolers are looking for more recognition and more services. As of 2005, fourteen states had introduced bills that would require public schools to let home-schooled students participate in school extracurriculars like sports, drama, and chess. Since home-schooling parents pay property taxes, they would appear to have a good case that they should be entitled to use local school services.

  Home-schooling is a classic counterintuitive microtrend. While schools have grown more complex, education has become more advanced, and most parents are so busy they are spending less time helping their kids with their homework, here you have a group of committed citizens doing exactly the opposite—dropping out of the system and doing it on their own. And they are obviously passionately consumed with home-schooling—you know what they get asked about when they go out for cocktails or dinner.

  Home-schoolers have done a great job clearing the way legislatively and administratively for a simple concept. They have cut through reams of rules and red tape to secure a place in the nation, and have already grown beyond anything the movement expected.

  But home-schooling may face a backlash from any number of quarters. Fewer students in schools means fewer teachers in the schools. Americans are not always kind to people who do things differently, and home-schooled kids have to get acceptance from public school kids—which could be hard on them socially. Even the losers of the Spelling Bee have complained that home-schooled kids have an unfair advantage, because they could (allegedly) just study spelling all day to the exclusion of math and science.

  The bottom line is that as public schools become increasingly worrisome to parents, more and more of them—from every sector—will take it into their own hands to educate their kids. Home-schooling will surely come under attack from defenders of public education, just as vouchers and charters have—although admittedly, home-schooling doesn’t require quite the same diversion of public resources. But in the meantime, the burden is increasingly on the American Mom to be not just healer and nurturer, but curriculum designer and science teacher, too.

  Will Home College be next? No doubt with the Internet’s growing ability to use video, be interactive, and set up social communities, there could well be a second generation of home-schooling that is Internet-based, widely available, and goes right through college. Already companies have put the core college lectures on tape, and could build the curriculum. This could start in the U.S., but have even wider application in more remote, rural countries where getting to school or college is impractical. Home-schooling may eventually be replaced by Internet-based school at home, with traditional public school becoming unnecessary for more and more families.

  THE INTERNATIONAL PICTURE

  With over 1 million students studying from their living rooms, the United States is the global leader when it comes to home-schooling. But other countries are picking up on this microtrend, too.