Family & Education

Novelist Mark Helprin on Learning, Curiosity, and Revitalizing Education

‘Do it the hard way.’ Mark Helprin explains how to fix education—at home and in schools.
Novelist Mark Helprin on Learning, Curiosity, and Revitalizing Education
Novelist Mark Helprin emphasizes the importance of fostering curiosity in children. Biba Kayewich
Jeff Minick
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Mark Helprin once got fired from tutoring a high school girl because she lit a cigarette at the kitchen table and refused to put it out. When he insisted, her mother stormed in and showed him the door.

It’s a story he tells to illustrate why so many schools fail today.

Jeff Minick
Jeff Minick
Author
Jeff Minick has four children and a growing platoon of grandchildren. For 20 years, he taught history, literature, and Latin to seminars of homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” Today, he lives and writes in Front Royal, Va.