Posted on 04/19/2023 7:23:34 AM PDT by hardspunned
A student who goes through this curriculum, kindergarten through high school, will have a mastery of the foundations of liberty. There is no other curriculum on the Web to match it. The curriculum is mostly self-taught. If a student gets stuck, he can get help from other students on the course Q&A forums. Older students serve as tutors for younger students. They learn by teaching, which is a great way to master any new field.
(Excerpt) Read more at ronpaulcurriculum.com ...
Education for our past intellectual giants used to be self-education, through books and interactions with intellectual betters. A return to that would do us immeasurable good, although it would not be universally pursued due to differing personal goals and aptitudes. In fact, a minority of citizens in society would pursue it, taking us to a past societal structure where a college degree of repute would be held only by a few in the upper echelons.
Today’s public education is spoon-fed pablum. It is almost worse than no “education” at all.
Still, avoid standardized testing, which has no other purpose than to prepare for subsequent standardized tests, preparatory for producing legions of robotized docile unthinking employees of giant corporations and mindless consumers. Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt of “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America” warned that if your kids are taking standardized tests, they are still part of the sytem.
We have all seen the damage being done to our children by our current educational system. We are opting out and looking for the best alternative.
I don’t know what Ron Pauls method is. My wife used Abeka and some other one I don’t remember the name of for our boy from preschool through High School. Worked out well. He went to junior college for an associates, then college for 2 majors and a minor, and is a few weeks away from his masters degree. He actually woks now for the junior college he had attended, working previously in law enforcement, city government, social security administration, etc.
Train them up right, because THEIR future depends on it.
I agree with you. Currently I am responsible for teaching history, government, all the social sciences and music and will continue that. She is doing extremely well in those areas but we aren’t satisfied with her other studies. If you follow the link, Paul’s method is explained. Thanks for your input.
I don’t have any direct experience with the curriculum, but I just spent a few minutes reviewing it and watching one of the review videos. I like what I see.
Same here.
The first standardized test that my 3 homeschoolers took was the GRE for graduate school. They did fine!
“Students start writing weekly essays in the fourth grade. They do not stop until they finish their final courses.”
Sounds like the perfect assignment for chatGPT.
Thank you! We hadn’t even considered that Hillsdale might have a program. Did you use this or know someone who did? I really appreciate being made aware of this option. We will definitely check it out.
Agree, but getting 4s and 5s on a slew of AP exams saves a tremendous amount of $$
We used mostly books from 1840 to 1870 or so. Far easier to teach with, more efficient and far more advanced than the insane books being used in school now.
Look for readers with ALL of the phonics rules which means the silent letter rules, substitute letter rules (which have been forgotten since the mid 1800s) in addition to the individual letter rules, dipthongs and tripthongs (two and three letters combined sounds).
Math books from the early to mid 1800s are so far ahead of present ones, you will be shocked.
What teacher or student today even know what a P+L statement is?
A fifth grader in the mid 1800s did.
And all of this in thin, light books that wouldn't break a kids' back to carry.
I am a book collector, so I already had most of the books we used.
You can find them for sale online, at flea markets, antique shops, used and rare book stores and at yard sales.
By searching online in Google books, Gutenberg.org and elsewhere, you will find many in digital form to download for free!
In NH (I don't know if this is still true), students had to be tested by a certified teacher at the end of every school year.
I think this is a good idea, to see how you are doing. Ours always tested at least a grade level above where they were "supposed" to be. One tested at "second year college" level reading and comprehension when in 3rd grade by our assistant superintendent.
"We never taught to the test", our kids always did well on them as they knew so much more than their peers the tests were written for.
One year, our assistant superintendent was grousing about wanting to "test the tests", a pile of tests he had on his desk to try to see if they were useful.
The other administrators and teachers were fighting him on this as they were afraid of how poorly the students would do.
They couldn't understand that he didn't care how well anyone did, he just wanted to see if the tests were valid.
I suggested, why not have my kids take all of the tests, and as a part of the assignment, they would critique the tests for him.
We were paying $50 each per year for a certified teacher to test them.
This way we would get our testing for free, he would get his tests tested, and our students would be the most tested ones in the state along with having some fun with an interesting assignment.
NH required us to submit our curriculum.
The first year It took me about 20 minutes to write this up.
I grabbed the books we were going to use from my collection and listed them.
I submitted them to the district office.
In subsequent years, the last assignment every year was for our kids to write and submit their curriculum for the following year.
This was particularly enjoyable to see them in the district office, submitting their own curriculum, and the reaction of the government toadies.
Neither of them had ever met a homeschooled student before. Ernie was a retired mechanical engineer, former B-24 bombardier navigator, etc. Rich had a PhD in education and one in economics. They both speak mutliple languages. On the ride, they grilled my daughter to see what she knew and how she reacted.
As we approached Barre, Rich asked her if she would come up with some questions for the JROTC students and interrogate them. He said they would never tell the adults what they really thought. This program is for mostly juniors and seniors.
On the return they debriefed her.
At on point, Richard asked if she could become a member of the high school track team, even though we were homeschooling. I asked if there were age requirements. Then, just how old did they think she was?
After a bit of conversation and debate, they settled on 18 or 19. Then Ernie asked her how old she was. 12.
Then I challenged them to find any 12 year old in our school district who could interact with juniors and seniors at (and above) their level and with adults as she was.
Public schooling artificially separates students by age. They never learn how to interact with people out of their age group.
Homeschooled students have a chance to mature far faster than public schooled ones do, held back by age and grades.
Interesting response, and I appreciate it. I have had only 3/4 of one year with my granddaughter so far. I’ve tried to recreate the type instruction I had back in the sixties with an emphasis on critical thinking. I’ve made a point to use texts from that era (1966 and 1972 for world and American history, the subjects I’m teaching her). She is a bright 13 year old and has done quite well with the high school senior survey books we are using. I do my own tests. My son and daughter will take my second granddaughter out of public school next year after grade five. My plan is to utilize her older sister to help teach the lessons she is learning this year. Has that been part of your method, using the older to help teach the younger while solidifying their understanding of the material? I will research what earlier teaching materials I can find, as you suggest. I appreciate your input. Thank you.
But very few chapters ("lessons") in the 'Murphy textbook' posted for this RP course have graphs - some Supply & Demand graphs.
Students who plan to go on to a business or economics concentration would need learn a lot more graphs than just the few introduced in this course.
It's fine for students who just want general knowledge of economics but plan on going into a Trade, a Nursing program, or study a physical science or engineering, etc.
We are leaning towards going with the Paul program. Hillsdale College also offers a guide that we plan on using for supplemental reading for both children and we who teaching. Thank you for taking the time to help us.
I wish we had done so with the older one, who we pulled out in grade three.
Good idea for the older to help teaching.
That's what we did in the one room school I attended.
I learned more the second and third times around teaching others than I did learning the first time myself.
Ours wanted to go to public school from 7th grade on, and they did fine, except for being bored.
I figured by then they should be able to survive anything.
Our younger wasn't crippled by public schooling, so needed no help from the elder.
The elder had some catching up to do.
I made the mistake of trusting the public schools to do their job, and had not monitored what was happening as she was getting As and Bs.
I had taught her some reading before school, and figured the public "school" would take care of it.
When she was in third grade I discovered she was illiterate.
The human brain changes around the third grade level, if they haven't learned how to read by then, it's hard.
Caught it in the nick of time.
Much of the math and spelling was taught while on road trips.
Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division,, square roots and spelling questions.
No calculators, paper or pencils allowed.
They hated it, but have since thanked me for it.
We visited a lot of the historical places in the northeast while doing genealogy, as we have ancestors who played parts in it all.
I have books written around the times things happened about and by relatives, so it all linked together.
Some of the shots fired at the British at Lexington were fired from a relative's house.
BTW, the younger daughter got a bachelors' in fashion design from FIT in Manhattan. But for her first job beat over 100 folks with PhDs for a position with a scientific magazine.
Her resume was the only one without spelling, punctuation and grammar errors.
Now she's in management there.
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