The big news yesterday, before that storm ripped up Oklahoma, was Yahoo’s buyout of Tumblr. This is the biggest news from Yahoo, since Marissa Mayer stepped into the work-family-feminism battle.

Yesterday’s stories about Tumblr  latched onto the untraditional education of the founder, David Karp. From the Times,

When David Karp was 14, he was clearly a bright teenager. Quiet, somewhat reclusive, bored with his classes at the Bronx High School of Science. He spent most of his free time in his bedroom, glued to his computer.

But instead of trying to pry him away from his machine or coaxing him outside to get some fresh air, his mother, Barbara Ackerman, had another solution: she suggested that he drop out of high school to be home-schooled.

“I saw him at school all day and absorbed all night into his computer,” said Ms. Ackerman, reached by phone Monday afternoon. “It became very clear that David needed the space to live his passion. Which was computers. All things computers.”

Karp never finished high school and never went to college. And he’s super successful. (More on Karp here.) He is the poster-boy for Peter Thiel and other entrepreneurial promoters.

Should we follow David’s mother’s path? Should we let our kids focus entirely on computers and ditch college? Last night, I coaxed (alright, yelled at) both of my boys away from the computer and gently urged them (yelled) to take their bikes for a ride. Maybe, I’m an idiot.