I enjoyed hearing Susan Wise Bauer speak live at the Texas Homeschool Coalition's convention in The Woodlands a few weeks ago.
I will paraphrase something Bauer said of homeschooling the high school years using classical education.
Every classical student's home education will look different in the high school years because all the years leading up to that point have been about exposing the student to a wide range of information to build a foundation of knowledge. They have already mastered basic reading, writing and math. Hopefully the exposure they have had (insert my opinion here: and the things they did in the rest of their time outside of homeschool academics), by the high school years will have led the students to find their passion (or at least an area of interest). Hopefully they have an idea who they are as a person and what they want to do, what they enjoy.
Thus the high school years should be a time where the top priority is given to spending time exploring on a more deep level the topics that the student is passionate about. The rest of the core academic subjects that are typical in America and that colleges require for admissions applications should be studied in a more bare bones way just to get them done. Spend more time on the areas of interest.
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I agree with this philosophy of education.
I would prefer that my kids (and all kids) spend time in their teen years figuring out who they are and what they enjoy and what they are passionate about and finding ways to fulfill those curiosities and passions instead of just loading up on rigorous academics in all content areas in order to try to look well-rounded and try for a higher than 4.0 GPA and shoot for admissions to a small number of brand name prestigious elite liberal arts colleges.
More and more people are saying that colleges have had their fill of campuses chock full of "well rounded" students and they instead want campuses filled with people with deeper knowledge and specialization in one field.
I would prefer that my kids know or at least seriously think they know what they want to do with their lives before applying to college so they can select a school wisely.I would hope that the college years are spend diving deeply into studies instead of floundering around aimlessly not knowing who they are since they have been pushed though an education system that said "take the most high level courses you can and spend your afternoon and night until midnight or later cramming homework and studying for short-term memory recall for the tests" mindset.
While I'm at it, I'll say that I would prefer college be a time to really learn not just to enjoy freedom away from parents and free license to get drunk and do drugs and have free sex with other students while living in co-ed quarters without curfews. College is too darned expensive to treat it like a $1K plus hedonistic spring break vacation every week of the year. But I digress...