Guest Post by Ron Paul
Schoolchildren across the country recently skipped school or walked out of class to rally for new restrictions on our economic and personal liberties in the name of fighting “climate change.” Instead of punishing students for playing hooky to promote a political cause, many teachers and administrators allowed, or even encouraged, students to skip school to attend these events. Public schools have also given students the day off to attend pro-gun control rallies.
The trend toward allowing students to miss school for political protests is an example of how indoctrination in left-wing ideology and politics has replaced actual education in many government schools. Some teachers may have seen their students’ eagerness to show support for authoritarian policies like the “Green New Deal” as confirmation of the teachers’ success in convincing students that the “science is settled” regarding climate change. The truth is that science regarding the causes, extent, and effects of climate change is far from settled. But you won’t learn that in most government schools.
Misleading students on climate change is far from the only, or even the worst, example of how student education is being shortchanged in order to promote socialism and its cousin, cultural Marxism. Government schools in Seattle are implementing a program called “Math Ethnic Studies.” As the title suggests, this replaces traditional mathematics with a curriculum built around the insane idea that math is not an objective truth, but a construct reflecting the interests of society’s dominant economic, social, and racial groups.
Among the questions the students are supposed to ask in this new curriculum are, “how is math manipulated to allow inequality and oppression in society?” and “who’s to say what is right?” In other words, two plus two may or may not equal four depending on one’s group identity.
Students who take this course may not be qualified to become scientists or engineers, but they will be qualified to agitate for expanded welfare and new limits on free speech in the name of “social justice.”
The politicization and dumbing down of government education does have an upside: it is leading more parents to pull their children out of government schools and homeschool instead. Homeschooling allows parents to ensure their children receive a quality education that does not undermine their political or other values.
Parents interested in providing their children with a quality education should consider my homeschooling curriculum. The Ron Paul Curriculum provides students with a well-rounded education that includes rigorous programs in history, mathematics, and the physical and natural sciences. The curriculum also provides instruction in personal finance. Students can develop superior communication skills via intensive writing and public speaking courses. Another feature of my curriculum is that it provides students the opportunity to create and run their own businesses.
The government and history sections of the curriculum emphasize Austrian economics, libertarian political theory, and the history of liberty. However, unlike government schools, my curriculum never puts ideological indoctrination ahead of education.
Interactive forums ensure students are engaged in their education and that they have the opportunity to interact with their peers outside of a formal setting.
I encourage all parents looking at alternatives to government schools — alternatives that provide children with a well-rounded education that introduces them to the history and ideas of liberty without sacrificing education for indoctrination — to go to RonPaulCurriculum.com for more information about my homeschooling program.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
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We homeschooled beginning 1990. Best thing we ever did.
I sat down with two of my friend’s grandsons who are being homeschooled, 14 and 13 years old. I have know them since they were born, they call me Uncle.
I was amazed at their knowledge as the conversation expanded.
With their Father’s permission I dropped off a copy of ‘The Killing of Uncle Sam’ for them both to read…and they are!
Here is food for thought, especially for those who support “public education” and rally about the doctrine of “socialization” that they claim is lacking in “homeschooled” children.
Let’s look at what “public education” has to offer:
1. Cliques and rampant bullying-Quite often the victims of bullying are punished more harshly for fighting back. Many times, bullies are part of a “protected” class–certain racial minorities, jocks, etc. There is strong official disapproval of students making friends outside their grade level. “Peer pressure” is used to push conformity.
2. Teachers that don’t teach reading writing and arithmetic. Pushing communist principles such as rabid environmentalism, blaming humanity for conditions beyond our control as well as pushing “communitarianism” (“it takes a village”)–actually communism and politicizing discourse. This also ties in with teacher-recommended feminizing and drugging (mostly boys) to make them “less fidgety” and more compliant–all for the “benefit” of the teacher.
3. Non-existent moral guidance…the communist concept of “values clarification”, allowing each student to set his own moral standard with no discussion permitted as to guidelines. A student dare not mention God or the Bible in “public school”–not permitted…discussing Islam and Judaism is OK…even field trips to mosques and synagogues are encouraged.
4. Sex education that normalizes homosexuality, transgenderism and other deviant practices, actually encouraging deviant behavior and downplaying and marginalizing heterosexuality and abstinence.
5. Insane zero tolerance practices, punishing students for pop-tarts shaped like guns or a student having an “unauthorized aspirin” or plastic butter knife. Of course, abortions and birth control are available without parental notification.
6. Lockdowns and backpack/locker searches by police utilizing “drug dogs”, getting the upcoming generation used to random unconstitutional searches. Quite often, students are “roughed up” by “school resource officers”…just because they can…Lockdowns should be reserved for prisons–not schools…
Since these “socialization” practices seem to be the norm in our “public education” systems, parents who send their children to these dysfunctional “indoctrination centers” are guilty of child abuse…
Children who are homeschooled actually do much better in life as they are comfortable with people of all ages.
True socialization takes place outside the classroom.
Good post!
As a former high school teacher, I will ditto this. In our homeschool group, made up of homeschooling kids in our area, I am teaching a Biology lab. These kids are the most creative, intelligent, curious, and respectful students I’ve ever had the honor of educating!
“The state is the father of children” ~ Horace Mann
Horace Mann was the first person responsible for pushing government control of education.
Control of children and their education is control of the future. Humanists have always understood this. Horace Mann, James G. Carter, and their many associates (including Senator Charles G. Sumner) were all Unitarians; they hated the Puritan faith of their forefathers with a passion. Their purpose in promoting state control of education was twofold. First, they rightfully understood that the only way to destroy Biblical faith was to control the schools and, little by little, remove Christianity and introduce Humanism. Second, they were Centralists or statist, men who believed that salvation comes by work of statist legislation or law.
STATISM IS A CULT!
Education is useless without the bible (Daniel Webster)
Ron Paul is a gift.
Very first page of Book I of Meditations by the brilliant Stoic, Marcus Aurelius:
From my great-grandfather, not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally.