Ron Paul Curriculum

The cost of the Ron Paul Curriculum is $250/year for a household membership ($350/year for non-automatic renewal), plus the cost of courses at $50 per course per student.

The total cost will depend on the number of students and the number of courses you choose for each student. If you have more than one student taking a course, each student pays for the course.

Example: If you have two students, and you choose four courses for the first student and five courses for the second student, the cost would be $250 for the annual household membership, plus $200 for the first student's courses, and $250 for the second student's courses, for a total of $700.

A membership is required to purchase and use our courses. The only exceptions are the CLEP/AP Cram courses.

The heart of this curriculum is the system of course-based communities. Here is where students teach other students.

Tutorial participation is important in the mastery of a course's materials. The curriculum's teaching methodology is based on the students' time spent as tutors.

In a homeschool curriculum, homework is all there is!

We are convinced that a lesson should not take more than one hour.

About half of this is a video lecture. The other half is either reading or practice (math). We assume that a student reads at 250 words per minute. The reading assignments are selected accordingly.

If a student practices for 10 minutes a day with the free online Spreeder speed reading program, then the reading portion of the curriculum can be cut sharply.

The writing assignment in lesson five should take 30 minutes. There is no reading assignment on this day.

Most of the student's work day should be devoted to home projects. In high school, "spare" time should be devoted to one or two of these: (1) apprenticing with a successful local business; (2) starting a home business; (3) studying for CLEP exams in order to get out of college at 60% of the cost, two years early. A few students highly motivated will graduate from college at age 18, just as RPC instructor Bradley Fish did. This cost him under $11,000.

If a parent wants a student to take a modern foreign language online, that will take extra time. This should be at least an hour a day.

If you are new to homeschooling, it can be very frustrating and confusing if you don't know where to start.

We are not legally qualified to answer any question about each state's home school regulations.

Rest easy, homeschooling is legal in the United States, all states. Each state, however, has its own requirements. So, where should you start?

We recommend you start with http://www.hslda.org. Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) is a nonprofit organization that defends the constitutional right of parents to direct the education of their children. While it isn't mandatory for you join HSLDA to use the Ron Paul Curriculum, it is highly recommended.

For information on your state, you may go to this page on their site: Home School Legal Defense Association. Here you can find information on the laws of your state, any legislation currently in the works, a list of state organizations, and other information.

Another great resource is one of your state's home school organizations. You may find a list of those in your state from the link above. They will be able to help you know what is required of you to withdraw your child from the public schools, subject requirements, and what options you have for reporting, if necessary in your state.

You may also find a local home school support group to be valuable. Many times they have organized activities for sports or field trips (museums, zoos, etc.) in which you can participate. However, it is not necessary to be involved in a local support group, if you find it doesn't fit your needs.

Various state governments have requirements governing home schools.

Some homeschool parents are doubtful about these regulations. Other homeschool parents have refused to cooperate with the state in any way regarding these requirements. Other homeschool parents have decided that a particular state's regulations are too restrictive, and they have moved to another state. They educate their children the way they choose. These are parents who have decided that they will not compromise with certain degrees of tyranny. They place their children's education before their own job opportunities.

Every parent must come to grips with the reality of state regulation. These regulations usually have to do with numerous indicators, such as the number of days of the school year and courses taught. But states do not regulate the content of the material in these courses. That is for parents to decide.

This curriculum has 180 lessons per course. This conforms to state requirements in all 50 states. No state requires more than 180 days in class for a one-year course.

This curriculum's methodology rests heavily on weekly essays by students. It also rests on the requirement that students create their own blog sites. Every essay is supposed to be published by the student on his own website. Parents are supposed to enforce this requirement. We know that students do not want to go public with their writing, and if they are forced to do so, they are going to pay more attention to their writing. They are going to do a better job of learning how to write.

If a truant officer approaches a parent who uses this curriculum, and he decides to make an inquiry, the parent is going to be in a position to show the truant officer that the student has a website of his own, and that he publishes weekly essays from the classes. The student may also have a YouTube channel.

What truant officer is going to want to come before a judge and claim that the student who is using this curriculum is not meeting state educational standards? What public school is going to have anything comparable in terms of student productivity?

Parents who want to employ our course providers to teach their children must decide to deal with whatever state regulations hang over them. Parents have to decide whether our program is better than any competing program. They have got to decide whether the content of our program meets their requirements. They must decide whether to compromise with the state.

Parents who are deeply concerned about their children are going to make the decision in terms of the needs of their children, and also in terms of their own religious and ideological preferences. They decide if this curriculum is best for their children.

Nothing is required. It is a tool for parents to help their children learn.

The advantage of WordPress (or any blog site) and YouTube as learning tools is that they let students post their essays or speeches in a public place. When they post essays online, people can see how they are doing. They will take more care in their writing assignments or speeches, plus they can receive feedback from other students.

A blog filled with essays scares off truant officers. A student posts three essays a week, 36 weeks a course, grades 6-12. Overall, that is over 750 essays. A truant officer would have to persuade a judge that the student is not doing serious work. How many essays do students write per year in a public school?

A student applying to a college can point to a blog with 750 essays. How many students can offer anything like this?

As for YouTube, tutoring in math probably requires access to YouTube. If a student gets stuck, he can show where he is stuck: procedure. The other students can then respond. But getting a YouTube account is not required by this curriculum. Nothing is required. It is a tool for parents to help their children learn.

Both YouTube and WordPress can be closed to all but authorized viewers.

People can have sites and not use their last names.

Given the universality of Facebook and Twitter, I do not see that WordPress essays and YouTube are more of a problem regarding privacy. But each parent must make this call.

On August 21, 2014, a parent sent this evaluation of the Ron Paul Curriculum.

"Our experiences were unfortunately negative. I have nothing bad to say about the curriculum, except on occasion, the timeliness of getting the latest lessons. We had far too many problems with the kids diverting attention to watching South Park videos or other trash cartoons, or videos, or even playing video games on an iPad. It got so bad we have to discontinue and use A Beka Academy curriculum. Perhaps it is their age(s), but we are forced (by their behavior) to send them to public schools."

They were correct in abandoning this curriculum. This curriculum is designed for self-disciplined, self-motivated students. Students whose minds wander, or who watch South Park videos, are unlikely to do well with this curriculum. The typical class assignment requires an hour: a half hour of reading -- or writing every fifth lesson -- and a half hour of watching a lecture and taking notes. If a student takes five courses, that is five hours a day of hard work.

There is no question that lots of students will rebel against this regimen. They will refuse to invest the effort. The parents do not have sufficient sanctions -- positive or negative -- to persuade them to do the work.

If you must nag your child to get him to do his school work, do not adopt the Ron Paul Curriculum. It will not work.

SAT and ACT scores are for students and parents who don't know the score.

The SAT is for students who have never received any college credit. The College Board, which produces the SAT, also produces CLEP exams. For about $90, a student who scores 50 or higher gets college credit. A student can quiz out of the first two years of college for under $2,000.

When a student enters as a sophomore or junior, the college pays no attention to the SAT or ACT score. The student has already shown that he or she can do college-level work.

One of the course providers for this curriculum is Bradley Fish, Jr. He received his bachelor's degree from an accredited college in the month he turned 18. He began this course of study at age 14. He was homeschooled. CLEP and upper division exam costs and tuition fees were $13,000, total. He never stepped foot on a college campus.

The Ron Paul Curriculum is an academically rigorous program. Any student who takes an RPC course can probably pass a CLEP with a score of 70 or higher. Students should begin to test for $90 a course at the end of the 10th grade. As soon as a student has passed three CLEPs, the SAT becomes irrelevant.

The question of accreditation has come up, especially in Christian circles, for about seventy years.

One of the most important marks of the complete surrender of Christians and libertarians to the state is the desire for academic accreditation.

Ask these questions:

Accredited by whom?
By whose authority?
By what standard?
Enforced by what sanctions?
Gaining what advantage?

Let us consider the assumptions and implications of accreditation.

First, the state has both the moral authority and the legal right to determine what constitutes a valid education. In other words, the moment that somebody accepts the idea of accreditation, he has accepted the legitimacy of the power of the state to determine the truth. He has also accepted the legitimacy of the state to determine the correct methodology of teaching.

Second, this acceptance of nationwide accreditation assumes that the federal government possesses this authority, too. What else could establish what constitutes a valid curriculum for all fifty states? But has the federal government ever implemented such a program of accreditation? No.

Third, no such national accreditation has ever existed. Even in the case of universities, there are multiple accrediting organizations. There is in fact, no agreement among the experts on what constitutes valid curriculum standards. Educrats squabble endlessly on this issue. They never produce a set of standards, nor do they agree on a system of national enforcement.

Fourth, the quest for accreditation means that the parent is willing to submit to the experts in the most important area of responsibility a parent has with respect to his children. In other words, the parent wants to crawl on his belly before the state or the experts, precisely when he ought to be trying to escape from state control over education. On the one hand, he is willing to spend money to make certain that his child has a form of education that is outside the jurisdiction of the state. On the other hand, he insists on bringing his children back under the jurisdiction of the state and the mutually certified experts.

Fifth, accreditation means that a committee, or a hierarchy of committees, must lay down some kind of criteria of truth. But no such criteria exist for which there is anything like agreement among parents or anybody else. These accreditation organizations never say in print that they are pursuing a pro-state agenda. They conceal this by all kinds of rhetoric about quality education, when in fact the nation's K-12 tax-funded schools are in the process of academic and moral disintegration. The reason why people want to pull their children out of public schools is that they really do understand that the state has destroyed modern education. The parents want out because they do not trust the state. Unfortunately, however, a lot of these parents still trust the state, and they want to make certain that the state has approved the curriculum their children use. Then why should the state approve a libertarian curriculum? Why should the state -- any state -- approve the Ron Paul Curriculum?

Sixth, children will be hampered in their careers without an accredited high school diploma. This is utter nonsense. It is possible to earn an accredited university degree, if that is what you want, from a state university or privately funded university, and never walk into a classroom. Bradley Fish, Jr., who is on the faculty of the Ron Paul Curriculum, earned his bachelor's degree in the same month that he turned 18. He used CLEP exams and other distance learning exams. He never had to pass the SAT. He never was asked about what he studied in high school. All he had to do was take CLEP exams, which he did all through high school. So, why does anyone need accreditation for a high school curriculum? There is no such need.

Parents are in the dark on this issue. They think that all accredited universities pay attention to what the curriculum was that a home school parent assigned. Universities have no time for any of this. They are buried in paperwork. They look at the SAT scores. They may look at high school grades. They do not look at any aspect of the textbooks or anything else. There is no national K-12 accrediting agency, so why should they bother to look for such evidence on a student's application? Parents are completely bamboozled by the illusion that most universities care one way or the other. If a student has passed five 6-credit CLEPs, that gets him in as a sophomore. High school accreditation? Forget about it. The colleges do.

We are watching the Wizard of Oz. The educrats tell us not to pay any attention to the committee behind the curtain.

If you wish to grade your child's performance, you may do so.

The Ron Paul Curriculum is a curriculum. It is not a school. There are not teachers monitoring students' performance, although sometimes the course providers do respond to questions posted on the forums.

There are national exams that parents can pay for their children to take. For information, go here: The Testing Lady.