HOMESCHOLARS

Home Education Magazine
“Good Stuff” Column
November-December 2001
Pages 50-51

The Concord Review

        The Wall Street Journal described it as “one of those little starbursts of intelligence sparkling over our dreary educational landscape.” The Concord Review—founded in 1987 by Will Fitzhugh, a Massachusetts history teacher—is the only academic journal in the world that publishes the work of high-school students. Furthermore, to be published in it is a definite feather in the cap. Review authors, according to the publisher, often include reprints of their papers with their college application forms; the result has been admission to a raft of prestigious institutions, among them Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale.

        For those (high-school-level) history students who feel up to the challenge, the standard Concord Review submission is an essay approximately 5,000 words long, with endnotes and bibliography, on any historical topic (ancient or modern, domestic or foreign). Many previously published examples can be seen at the Review website (www.tcr.org); titles in the Summer 2001 issue include “Grigori Rasputin,” “Women in WWII,” “German Witch Trials,” “Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, and “Darwin in Kansas.” The essay submission form—which asks for school address and names of teacher, principals, and superintendents—is targeted towards public school students, but the Review welcomes the work of homeschoolers. (Mr. Fitzhugh refers to us as “homescholars,” a lovely term.)

        An annual subscription to TCR (four issues) costs $40; [now $60 or $100—WHF] order from TCR or call the journal office at 978-443-0022. Essays, along with the completed “Form to Accompany Essays” and a check for $40, should be sent [online now—WHF] to The Concord Review, 730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24, Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776. For more information, visit the TCR website at www.tcr.org, call 978-443-0022, or email fitzhugh@tcr.org.