Ron Paul Launches Homeschool Curriculum

[mrs.b]

I think this has a lot to do with parental involvement, though...If a parent is choosing to homeschool, then the chances are greater that the parent is raising his or her child to value education and is taking the time to stay on top of the student's progress.

That is going to be the case by the general nature of homeschooling versus any other variety of schooling. In homeschooling, the parent is the sole decision-maker and deliverer of the curriculum; there are only two parties involved, the educator and the child. In either public or private school, there are dozens of parties involved: the educator (may be more than one), child, parents, administrator(s), peer group, and possibly more. When the parent(s) is the sole party responsible for teaching, testing, supporting, and all the rest, of course they will be more involved.

The level of involvement of public school parents in their child's education is certainly a problem and contributing factor in performance, but even if parents want to be involved, they are often stonewalled. It's as if the education platform is somehow proprietary and educators are breaking trade secrets by sharing, so they do not. Or maybe they do not because if more parents realized supplementing school education is only one step away from homeschooling anyway, there would not be enough students to fill their chairs and they'd lose their jobs. When my son was in school, we desparately wanted to be more involved - as a struggling learner, he desparately needed it - and asked regularly for information on what the teacher was teaching in the class so we could supplement at home; most other children could tell their parents what they were studying, but due to his issues, our son could only do that if he already understood the subject which would mean he didn't need our help. We were frequently ignored or given vague answers that might as well have been non-response. We were treated like helicopter parents for wanting to keep aware of and help our son with his struggle to learn. The only way we could be involved at all was to do it all ourselves.

For a FORMERLY struggling learner that tested almost two full grade levels below term, only three months of homeschooling has him almost entirely caught up, and the time investment on our parts is only slightly more than what we were already doing with homework and re-explaining areas we were able to identify as weak despite teachers' vague / no-response. That's a payoff that can't be denied in our opinions, not only when it comes to all of our stress levels, but in terms of his future prospects and quality of life years down the road.

The neat thing about homeschooling is that we also get to decide how much or how little exposure to new things our child will receive. We are also of the opinion that we will deliver all the information, so he can form his own opinions. As residents of another Southern state, the skewing or absence of certain varieties of information in public school curriculums is sad, in my opinion, but we can correct that by choosing our own curriculum and adding resources where we feel chosen curriculums are lacking. We'll check out Ron Paul's curriculum after Sept. 2 (not before! lol), and look forward to it. Maybe it'll be useful in whole, maybe in part, or maybe we will not use a bit of it. The lower grade levels are free according to the website, so it'll be easy for homeschool parents to evaluate the "fit" with their own child's and personal styles.