I'm certainly glad Barack Obama's mother was concerned with keeping him challenged, but it might be too political an answer.
This was an interesting article about Obama's mother and I pulled out a couple parts that fit with our discussion.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1729524-1,00.html
Ann took a job teaching English at the U.S. embassy. She woke up well before dawn throughout her life. Now she went into her son's room every day at 4 a.m. to give him English lessons from a U.S. correspondence course. She couldn't afford the �lite international school and worried he wasn't challenged enough.
In 1971, when Obama was 10, Ann sent him back to Hawaii to live with her parents and attend Punahou, an �lite prep school that he'd gotten into on a scholarship with his grandparents' help. This wrenching decision seemed to reflect how much she valued education.
