Ask 17-year-old Matthew Smedberg what he has been reading lately.
The Roman historian Livy tops the list, part of his Great Books curriculum. For fun, there have been a trilogy by the Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz ("very well written and exciting"), "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" ("one of the few history books to get that period just right") and the sci-fi thriller "Speaker for the Dead" ("the best work of fiction of the 20th century").
Those don't include books on architecture, an interest that he thinks could become a career.
Matthew Smedberg reads all the time, sometimes following the curriculum he designs with his mother, Marion, but often following his nose. Pure intellectual curiousity, he and his mother agree, is what's missing from most public high schools.
"I think what most people think of as high school is the social life -- the parties, the football," said Matthew, who plans to go to college next year. "It's not the intellectual adventure."
By mainstream academic standards, Matthew is a star. In September, he was named a National Merit semifinalist, a prestigious award based on his perfect score on the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT). Only three students enrolled in Loudoun County public schools, and four Loudoun students enrolled at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, received the same honor this year.
"On the one hand, it's not nice to brag," said Marion Smedberg. "On the other hand, it's nice to let people know that home-schoolers can excel."
Matthew knows the home-school stereotypes -- two categories, he said. Some people think home-schoolers are hicks who are too lazy to send their children to school and keep them home all day doing nothing, a view he describes as "just ignorant." Others think that all home-schoolers are fundamentalist Christians whose children have as little outside contact as possible and will be unable to function in the secular world, the "real world," as adults.
Matthew is proof that few generalities can be made about the county's growing home-schooling movement.
Yes, he's religious, a Roman Catholic who spent four years at a boarding school that prepares boys for the priesthood before deciding that it wasn't for him. Public-school secularism isn't the main reason the Smedbergs have taught five of their seven children in their Sterling home.
It's too soon for the seventh and youngest, who is 3, and their 12-year-old daughter started private school this year, a break from a house full of brothers. "We think that every kid's an individual, and you've got to do what's right for each of them," said Marion Smedberg, 51.
But no, Matthew isn't isolated. For him, home-schooled hardly means homebound. Besides spending hours studying in the sunny blue den and classroom that he and his brothers built with their father, Matthew has a schedule of extracurricular activities that could make the best soccer mom's head spin.
He works at Target. He takes upper-level math and laboratory science classes at Northern Virginia Community College. With other home-schooled students, he attends a weekly religion course taught by a local priest. He sings in church choirs at Our Lady of Hope in Cascades and St. Catherine of Siena in Great Falls.
He has played the cello with the Loudoun Symphony. He performs with the Sterling Playmakers: Tonight is opening night for their production of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," in which he plays the Squirrel.
