Ron Paul Launches Homeschool Curriculum

[cookderosa]

I read a book when I was 19 (!) called How to Multiply Your Baby's Intelligence by Glenn Doman. That was when I decided to homeschool, I didn't even have a husband or kids or a prospect of either. My plan, as always, was to do it perfectly. The problem, of course, was that I really really believed there was a perfect way, thus I would do "that." I even went to PA and trained in the specific program to teach babies, which we started, when our son was 2 weeks old. That was 4 kids and 19 years ago. Fast forward.... I have a different opinion today.

There is no perfect way, if there was, then everyone would be doing it- including the schools!
You don't live in a bubble. Believe me, I've tried. Sheltering/anti-social is the opposite of exposed/social. Pick one or be ready for both.
Your children are real people with real opinions and despite your best molding, they are not programmable. Influenced, yes, but they are not parrots.
Homeschooling is damn hard, especially if you're doing it right.
There will be aspects of your homeschooling that you are good at, and things you suck at. Too bad you won't know until you're knee deep which is which.
You're probably NOT going to have trouble teaching academics, it will be the other stuff...
The world is your oyster, but it's an expensive oyster. Sometimes, you just have to give them clam juice and call it good enough.
Homeschooling 1 is different from homeschooling 2 which is different from homeschooling 5 which is different from public school. Apples and oranges.
Being around all of your children all of the time means you are spending 6000 MORE contact hours per year with your child than if they were in public school. Fact.
You won't have the time, resources, energy, or resourcefulness to carefully plan and manage all 6000 hours for each child. There is no "on" that is different. You're always "on." Warts and all.
Your kids will learn from your neighbor, their sports teams, church groups, etc. and believe me when I tell you no one cares as much about what fills up their heads than you. Some of it will be crap.
Whatever you think about homeschooling before you star will be different than when you start, which will be different by the end of your first year, and second, and third, and eighteenth.
Why you start homeschooling probably won't be the same reasons you continue.
Thinking for themselves means being free to think differently than you- hang on.

P.S. Homeschooling has exploded over the past 2 decades, and we now have a good pool on the internet of "graduates" who are sharing their ups and downs. It wasn't all rainbows and lollipops. Some kids resent their parent's choice for their education. Some are verbal about it DURING. These are things to think about before you start and revisit as you go.

[mrs.b]

Politicizing and proselytizing through education is not welcome, but with private or homeschooling, we can choose to use a particular school or curriculum. That choice is not available when in the education system; you can supplement with your own chosen material, but you cannot unteach what they spend all day learning and not all districts and teachers keep personal opinions to themselves.

No two of us will view this topic the same, because we've all had different personal experiences to frame our perceptions. My opinion on the value of public education was dramatically different before I had a child of my own, and further still from when we realized my son needed additional support beyond the norm. For my family, we saw the ugly side and made a choice to discard it rather than continue to hope we got a more caring teacher the next year. I'm pleased to hear others experienced better, but generalizations come in a lot of different shapes and sizes.

As for generalizing, it is human nature to do so once repeated behaviors in a given group are noted. In my family's case, our son had five teachers, of which two seemed to understand the job of teacher is more than just a job when contributing to (not solely responsible for) the development of young minds. The other three balked and became rude at the idea of parental involvement in our child's education; I'd have been positively giddy at an occasional parent-teacher conference to discuss strengths and weaknesses that could use more work at home, but to get one, we had to demand them under the blanket of IEP because there never seemed to be time. The other two understood and shared areas our son needed supplemental work in notes as needed without needing to stomp and shout, but with only 40% of his educators showing any concern for their students' development beyond checking the boxes of bare minimum requirements in their jobs, it is still a statistic that speaks to me.

I certainly did not expect teachers to parent my child for me but teaching has to be a partnership with the parents to further their educations, and for the other three that made up the other 60%, the only "cooperation" they wanted or responded to was purchased supplies when demanded (up to and including a few hundred dollars on color toner cartridges for a printer), food and presents for holiday parties, and chaperones on field trips. Where actual education was concerned, we were kept in the dark despite requests for information to help our own child. While I hear the arguments that other teachers elsewhere want and beg for parental involvement, I have not seen it. I have seen the opposite which was detrimental to my child, so please forgive me for having strong opinions to the contrary of teachers' pleas that parents and parental involvement are the significant contributor to failing education within the public school system because I've witnessed and experienced quite the opposite.

On the subject of special needs, not all special needs kids are put in those low headcount classrooms; the norm for our local districts is most children with IEPs are mainstreamed in regular classrooms, with regular teachers, and the same high student counts per teacher, with minimal access to supplemental resources. Local districts failing standardized testing repeatedly blame special needs kids for lower scores according to the press releases year after year. Every parent of those special needs kids that I've spoken to are beyond frustrated they are not given the information to help raise those scores by working in coordination with the teachers to teach their children. It makes no sense. Regional differences in function? Maybe, but it's what my family and many others have seen and experienced first-hand, which somehow contradicts the generalization that parents' apathy is the sole cause.

[Lindagerr]

You are right in many of your points mrs.b. I did say I was lucky to live in a small district in NJ, part of the reason we didn't move for 28 years was that my son could not have gotten the time and attention he did if we moved to some of the bigger districts.

I am going to be politically incorrect here in noting that schools in the south do seem to be slower to embrace special education. My sister lives in SC now and I know my niece with special needs is not getting the attention or time from teachers that she should. I have never lived or taught there so I can not comment from personal experience.

I also have not taught in a main stream classroom here in NY I have only worked with severly handicapped children. They are not in regular schools but they do have excellent teachers and in most cases only one or two children to an exceptionally caring aide(Most of whom seem to have a SPed kid of their own).

I also must say we are beginning to have a backlash in the north where parents of "normal" kids are angry about the amount of money spent on Special education. Public school will never be able to meet the needs of all students. If I had children now I would seriously consider homeschooling. I knew lots of home schoolers even back in the early 90's and some of them were great and some of them were horrible. Now with the explosion of homeschooling I think it is easier for all parents to find the resources they need to do a better job.

All of the parents on this sight seem to be intelligent and well rounded enough to be open-minded homeschoolers. I just wish all homeschooling parents were like that. Just like I wish all Public school teachers would try to teach all subjects from an objective point of view and not let their personal beliefs influence how they teach.

[namwen]

I have no problem with being politically incorrect but to say that schools in the south seem to be slower at something based on another person's experience seems to be bit of a stretch. You think that you may be making a pretty broad statement there? I mean, the south plus Texas encompasses 100 million people. That seems like a weird statement coming from someone who later in their post said that people should be more open minded.

Having said that, I am sure that there are many weak links in the education system concerning kids who need special education. I am guessing that it is more of a personal motivation thing. Some people are really bad at their jobs. Others are really bad at leading others in education.

[namwen]

The thing that I like most about this curriculum is that many of the courses require a weekly essay. That part really does excited me. As a matter of fact, it was just a few days before I dicovered this that I told my wife that I wish we had a curriculum that required regular writing.

[cookderosa]

The thing that I like most about this curriculum is that many of the courses require a weekly essay. That part really does excited me. As a matter of fact, it was just a few days before I dicovered this that I told my wife that I wish we had a curriculum that required regular writing.

If you build on what he says and reference the Robinson Curriculum, you have your child write 1 page every day. It can be on anything, but it has to be a page. We start writing with copy work through 7th grade then it's 1 page daily. Occasionally, I'll have a bigger assignment, but only maybe 2-3 times per year. Doing 1 page daily allows you to really develop a few key things- penmanship, use of basic capitals punctuation, and spelling. My kids almost always use their Netflix documentary as the basis for their paper, but not always. We have an bunch of interesting books like the Eye Witness series and encyclopedias (remember those? LOL) that they can use, but I give them about 5 seconds to think of a topic since that's not the purpose. My oldest, who is finished with homeschool, did 5 paragraph essays every day through his senior year. My next oldest might start that sooner since writing comes much easier to him. I never grade content, only structure, which has made for many amusing and interesting papers lol.

[namwen]

If you build on what he says and reference the Robinson Curriculum, you have your child write 1 page every day. It can be on anything, but it has to be a page. We start writing with copy work through 7th grade then it's 1 page daily. Occasionally, I'll have a bigger assignment, but only maybe 2-3 times per year. Doing 1 page daily allows you to really develop a few key things- penmanship, use of basic capitals punctuation, and spelling. My kids almost always use their Netflix documentary as the basis for their paper, but not always. We have an bunch of interesting books like the Eye Witness series and encyclopedias (remember those? LOL) that they can use, but I give them about 5 seconds to think of a topic since that's not the purpose. My oldest, who is finished with homeschool, did 5 paragraph essays every day through his senior year. My next oldest might start that sooner since writing comes much easier to him. I never grade content, only structure, which has made for many amusing and interesting papers lol.

I like the idea of having at least a semi-regular lecture as well. Robinson's is strictly print, correct?

[Hometeacher628]

We utilize Robinson for my now 6th grader. Have always required a narration daily. This year she will be responsible for an essay daily. She picks the reading and the topic from the preapproved list of readings and topics. We actually use the old Book of Knowledge encyclopaedias.We strive for the 5 paragraph model, and write using every other line to leave room for corrections. My oldest was devastated that the first go 'round at her essays were not the perfection she thought they were when she first turned them in! We corrected work for the the younger dd much earlier on, and revisions are a breeze-not devastation ! Makes it easier to teach the concept of rough draft and how important an outline is. I make them turn in an outline as well-no matter how rough. These habits are easy to instill, and makes the difficult writing of college papers a breeze. Older daughter had a 10 pager due last week for a summer college class she's taking, and it was no big deal. MLA format, works cited....etc. Just build good habits in small steps and a good foundation. I usually have to set a timer, otherwise both would get lost in books!

[cookderosa]

I like the idea of having at least a semi-regular lecture as well. Robinson's is strictly print, correct?

Yes. Literature, writing, and Saxon math. There are also a few extras they do, like vocab, but the real core of HIS belief, is that everything beyond the 3 r's is eating valuable brain space. We are not strict RC users. In fact, I've gotten away from Saxon and I've changed the reading list a lot, and we have added in electives, among other things. All that said, I think where I really am is that in the very early elementary grades, there are fun things to do- artsy, active, engaging, etc. and of course learning to read. Then in the elementary/middle years, I think the RC is a great fit. Perfect almost. But then for high school, you can imagine I differ because I like the idea of earning credit for a zillion reasons that extend beyond simple academics.

I used to belong to the main RC Yahoo group, and after a few years I had to back out- it's crazy over there, wear a helmet. I do believe if you do 100% RC curriculum from the start, and go all the way through, you'll probably be raising some bright conservative scientists; Dr. Robinson did. In real life, I have never, however, EVER met anyone who came remotely close to getting through the reading list or into the sciences. Science doesn't even start in RC until after calculus, and then it's using the freshman MIT physics book, so...... yeah, that's not where we are. They also don't allow TV or sugar in any amount. That said, I believe there are elements of that curriculum that are valuable, and so I've taken what I like and left the rest. My laissez-faire attitude never did fly in the yahoo group lol.

[namwen]

Well, I am not a curriculum nazi. I am more of a Conservative Libertarian. Not totally in all of the ways that you might expect though. I don't live in fear that my kids might catch something from others who don't believe everything that I do.