The School Revolution (17 page)

That usually ends the peer pressure.

I have already mentioned the benefit of getting out of the corporate rat race, but here are many others.

Satisfaction:
The parents who become responsible for something as important as the education of their children can see progress. This progress is measurable. Test scores rise. Reading skills increase. Writing skills increase.
Arithmetic skills increase.

The parents know that they are in charge. This is satisfying. They know that their child is not dependent on a teacher in a classroom full of students, using textbooks written by strangers and screened by committees. The parents decide what their children should read. They monitor their performance. They are focused on their children, unlike a classroom
teacher, whose attention is diverted by children with learning difficulties or behavior problems.

Safety:
The concept of safety is broad. It encompasses physical safety, but far more important is moral safety. The older the children are, the more important this is. You can do a Google search for articles on the moral environment of children in middle schools. I did such a search. The
older you are, the more it will amaze you.

Then there is ideological safety. What ideas govern the curriculum in your local schools? Not many parents know. Not many take the time to skim through the textbooks. They assume that everything is all right. But why should anyone assume this? Why should textbook writers, who are the product of today’s universities, be reliable ideologically?

There is also psychological safety. Peer group pressure is intense. If a young person becomes the target of bullying, this can make the child’s life miserable. The stories are continual. The U.S. National Institutes of Health did a study of this in 2009. Here is its summary: “Prevalence rates of having bullied others or having been bullied at school for at least once in the last 2 months
were 20.8% physically, 53.6% verbally, 51.4% socially, or 13.6% electronically. Boys were more involved in physical or verbal bullying, whereas girls were more involved in relational bullying. Boys were more likely to be cyber bullies, whereas girls were more likely to be cyber victims.”
23
The Canadian government has issued a pamphlet on this:
Bullying: We Can All Help Stop It
. Canada? Where there
is supposedly racial and cultural harmony? Where things seem so calm? Yes. This is an international problem in tax-funded schools.

Then there is the security issue of the latchkey child. Parents who are absent during the day must deal with this problem. Children after school and during summers are unattended for several hours a day. This is not good for younger
children or teenagers.

All these threats end on the day parents pull their child out of a local tax-funded school.

Student Performance:
Tests show that homeschooled students perform above grade level. Just Google “homeschool test scores.” The scores are way above norm. In a 2010 article on the debate over test scores, we read this: “Homeschooled students score about 72 points
higher than the national average on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). The average American College Test (ACT) score is 21. The average score for homeschoolers is 22.8 out of a possible 36 points. Homeschoolers are at the 77th percentile on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills.” The article cites a study made by a professor at Northeastern State University that stated “homeschoolers are more likely
to come from homes with educated parents and higher incomes. Homeschooling parents are less likely to divorce (which is true of higher income couples in general). Homeschooled kids watch less television. All of this results in higher academic achievement.”
24

Wait a minute! Here is a study that says that students perform better in home-based schools because the home
environment is so much better than in tax-funded schools. Is this supposed to persuade parents to leave their children in tax-funded schools that are not performing well? Are parents supposed to sacrifice their children’s academic performance on the altar of political correctness?

In Congress, parents don’t do this. If they live in the Washington, DC, school district, they usually send
their children to private schools. Everyone on Capitol Hill knows this, but no one talks about it. The following report is from the Heritage Foundation. It reports on private school decisions made by senators and congressmen. Note: this includes those who live in upscale counties in Virginia and Maryland, which is a majority of congressmen. The report did not ask about those who lived inside the
District of Columbia. Also note: only about 10 percent of Americans sent their children to private schools in 2009.
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• Forty-four percent of senators and 36 percent of representatives had at one time sent their children to private school. 
  
• Twenty-three percent of House Education and Labor Committee members and nearly 40 percent
  of Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee members have ever sent their children to private school. 
  
• Thirty-eight percent of House Appropriations Committee members and 35 percent of Senate Finance Committee members have ever sent their children to private school. 
  
• Thirty-five percent of Congressional Black Caucus members and 31 percent of Congressional
  Hispanic Caucus members exercised private-school choice.
  26
   
  

It would be beneficial if they preached what they practiced, as Charles Murray so aptly puts it.
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Homeschooling parents can pay to have their children tested annually. The three main tests are the Stanford 10 Achievement Test, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills,
and the California Achievement Test.

Self-Disciplined Children:
If the curriculum that parents adopt stresses self-teaching, the students learn how to follow through on their own. This is a crucial skill, whether a student goes to work or to college after high school. This skill must be taught to most children.

Parents should guide young children, but at some point
the parent should begin to transfer responsibility to the child. Nagging is a self-defeating practice. The high school graduate who needs to be nagged by a parent is in serious trouble. He should know how to complete tasks without intervention from others. He should know how to research topics on his own.

The curriculum should teach children how to learn. If it is online, it should
provide tutorial opportunities. The best way to learn anything new is to teach it, once you have the rudiments mastered.

Parents say they are training their children to be independent. But when should this training begin? I think it should begin no later than the fifth grade. Students should be given more authority to teach themselves. This benefits the students. It also reduces the
teaching time required for the parent-teacher.

The educrats deeply resent homeschooling, but it is too late for them to roll it back. They tried this in the mid-1980s and failed. Politicians do not take on well-organized voter blocs that can inflict damage on them. Only if there is a stronger voting bloc pushing for a piece of legislation will
politicians challenge a well-organized voting bloc.

Homeschoolers are digitally well connected. They are fanatical about defending their rights. They organize protests. They call legislators. They also cannot easily be monitored or policed. So the costs of enforcement are high, the political payoff is low, the risk of an organized response is high, and nobody in the general public really
cares. At this point, it is way too late for politicians to stamp out homeschooling.

As more homeschooled children become adults and get the vote, it will be even riskier to take on the movement—and it is a movement. The numbers are growing. The success of homeschooled children in the National Spelling Bee and the National Geography Bee is well known by now. The test scores of homeschooled
children are way above the norm. It is hard for school districts to impose sanctions on homeschool families. Local judges want evidence that the children are being cheated educationally. The evidence shows the contrary. The homeschooled children outperform public school children. The local school districts do not want a lawyer to bring this information out in court. It would be bad publicity.

This means that time is on the side of the homeschool movement. The court battles of the 1980s went against the educational establishment. Its attitude today is to let this sleeping dog lie. They do not want another series of court defeats.

The free market is a more powerful force than bureaucracy. The benefits that the free market provides are ever growing. The state cannot
keep up with this, despite the power of coercion. Here we see a system that costs local communities over $10,000 per student per year. This system cannot match the output of a homeschool, where the costs of materials are under $500 a year. In the case of the Robinson Curriculum, one example of a homeschooling package available, it’s $200, once per family, plus paper and toner.

When
you can spend less and get a better product, the state goes on the defensive. Think of the U.S. Postal Service. There was no political movement behind the shrinking of the Postal Service. There was simply e-mail. One person at a time, Americans walked away from the USPS. They will never come back.

If you see that the benefits for your children
will outweigh the costs borne by you as a parent-teacher, it is time to begin investigating homeschooling. Attend a convention. Link up with a homeschool group in your zip code. Look online for curriculum materials.

You will find that there are more choices than you have time to research thoroughly. It is not 1985 any longer.

One size doesn’t fit all.

There are
many sizes available today.

CampaignforLiberty.com

LewRockwell.com

Mises.org

RonPaulChannel.com

RonPaulCurriculum.com

RonPaulInstitute.org

RonPaulMD.com

TeaPartyEconomist.com

TomWoods.com

Liberty Defined

End the Fed

The Revolution: A Manifesto

A Foreign Policy of Freedom:
Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship

Pillars of Prosperity: Free Markets,
Honest Money, Private Property

The Case for Gold: A Minority
Report
of the United States Gold Commission

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Title Page
Welcome
Preface: My Experience in Public Schools
Introduction
Part I: The Centrality of Education
The Centrality of Education
1: Educating for Liberty
2: Educating for Leadership
3: Educating for Legacy
Part II: A Strategy for Educational Reform
A Strategy for Educational Reform
4: Family-Based Education
5: Competition in Education
6: Self-Instruction
7: Online Education
Part III: The Ideal School
The Ideal School
8: What Parents Want
9: What Students Need
10: What Colleges Want
11: The Ron Paul Curriculum
Conclusion
Some of My Favorite Websites
Also by Ron Paul
Newsletters
Table of Contents
Copyright