Ron Paul and Homeschoolers
Apparently Represenative Ron Paul will be on The View Tuesday, December 4th, so anyone intrested should make a point to watch it. He has quite a growing number of supporters in the homeschooling communities, and with good reason. Represenative Paul is quite the homeschool supporter. From his Family Education Freedom Act that sought to empower families to choose non-public education to his glowing praise of homeschoolers. He’s a sweet talker, that Ron.
Now, I should make it clear that while I like that he is pro-homschooling, I’m still not a Ron Paul supporter. His politics and mine are very different on many levels. Some of what he has to say does make a lot of sense though. Such as
“The federal government does not own our children. Yet we act as if it does by letting it decide when, how, and what our children will learn. We have turned their futures over to lobbyists and bureaucrats.
I support giving educational control back to parents, who know their children better than any politician in D.C. ever will.
I think this ties in a little with my sleep post the other day. When we let some outside entity decide what time our children need to be up and going every single day we are handing our children over to someone else. Often while going against what is best for their individual needs. Some children do well early in the morning, some do not. It’s not the government’s job to decide whether my child should be an early riser or not, and trying to force them into a mold that they do not fit will only cause harm. We might not see the harm for many years, but it is still there.
Dana noted in her comment that many children, once in collge and free of outside forces dictating when they have to get up and go to class they don’t know what to do with themselves. I can tell you from personal experience that without someone hanging ovr my head like I had every day of my public school career I bcame that kid running late to class. Luckily I wasn’t alone in the early morning dash across the squad every day. And double luckily I went to a women’s college so showing up in pajamas and slippers wasn’t a big deal, half the class wasn’t dressed yet either.
Ron Paul has really come out of seemingly no where and continues to gain ground. Early on some thought that John Edwards would be the top contender among homeschoolers, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Their use of tutors, following the school’s curiculum, and their “school at home” approach has seemed to turn a lot of homeschoolers off. Mike Huckabee is another candidate that is using a homeschooling ticket, though not sucessfully. While he has done some good for homeschoolers he has also reduced some of the freedoms for homeschoolers in Arkansas. It’s a slippery slope of politics with supporters going back and forth on who is the most homeschooling friendly.
If you’re not sure who fits your politcal style best here’s a great quiz you can take to find out.
politics, Ron Paul, John edwards, Mike Huckabee, homeschoolers
December 1st, 2007 at 6:52 am
[...] Summer Minor placed an observative post today on Ron Paul and HomeschoolersHere’s a quick excerpt [...]
December 1st, 2007 at 6:54 am
[...] post by Summer Minor This was written by . Posted on Saturday, December 1, 2007, at 5:28 am. Filed under [...]
December 1st, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Good post. My wife and I are expecting our first child this month, and we plan on homeschooling. Even though a lot of our friends roll their eyes at us and say “You’ll see…”, we are committed! We’re also Ron Paul supporters, for a lot of reasons. The biggest one is reflected in your post: People mostly know how to run their lives much better than any political bureaucracy. We know all those details that aren’t captured in the data - not even by Google!
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:13 am
A question for you: When your children grow up and have to support themselves, an employer is going to tell them what time to arrive in the workplace and what time to leave, right? So why isn’t getting used to that during childhood a good idea?
I wish I could roll into the office at the hour that suits me — that would be about noon because I am a night person (always have been) and not an early morning riser by choice. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work that way.
While I appreciate what Mr. Paul says about lobbyists and bureaucrats, I still believe that there are important life lessons learned at school each day.
I, however, am a proponent of the voucher system since I have spent zillions of dollars on private school tuition for both kids due to my refusal to send them to public schools at various points in their lives. For instance, my youngest attended the local public school from kindergarten through sixth grade, but has been in private school since then because the public junior and high schools are disasters — overcrowded, gang and drug-infested. My youngest attends a private Christian high school where I know he is safe, nurtured, and being educated about faith as well as all the other subjects.
It’s an interesting discussion, to be sure.
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:13 pm
JHS, you must have skipped the part about self-motivation. Great reading skills there. Not every single job on this planet requires getting up at 7 AM sharply, thank goodness. That’s why not. Why prepare them for a world of getting up at the crack of dawn and spending the day in a cubicle when that’s not the only possiblity for them. In fact, I doubt seriously that my kids would go that route. But, by teaching them self motivation I can do better than forcing them to get up early each morning. I can teach them to do what they need to do to be happy. If one of them picks a job that requires getting up early they will be motivated to do so because it’s what they want, not because they are told that they have to. They learn that if this is what they want then they have to work for it, a lesson that will prepare them far more than “Do as your told”.
You may not have the option to walk into the office whenever you please, but you have the option to choose a career that does or does not require getting up that early. If you didn’t really want to do it I doubt any time clock in the world would force you to keep going back.
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Bravo, Summer. My husband and I have been self-employed for most of out adult lives. One of the lessons we want our children to take with them into adulthood is that you can make career choices that do not require you to compromise who you are, how much free time you want to have, and how much time you have left to spend with your family. When your job is your choice, and has an immediate and vital connection to your family and its livelihood, it is a joy to do, and motivation is rarely a problem. Sometimes you have to look way beyond accepted norms, and fight a lot of naysayers to find that occupation. As homescholers, we actually can give our kids the opportunity to ask why and whether it’s important and unavoidable to do some of the things that most of our society takes for granted. They may not grow up with the crippling assumption that it’s the only way to live.
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Great post. My two college kids never had to get up at a certain time all through homeschool highschool. Yet they were required to exercise discipline and self-motivation in all their studies. Both are now functioning extremely independently as college students.
I disagree completely with JHS when he says that important life lessons are learned in school. Important life lessons are learned in life. Having spent more than 20 years in the classroom as both a student and a teacher, and 17 years as a homeschooling parent, I now know that the life of a homeschooling student is far more realistic than life in a classroom with 20 some children of the same age waiting for a bell to signal the start of another class session. Just as you said, Summer, 13 years in school is 13 years of having your life scheduled for you. No autonomy…no creativity…very little self discipline required.
December 3rd, 2007 at 8:52 am
This could be an intense emotional shock to some…. but…. children *are not* adults. There, I said it.
Children have different physical needs than adults, and while their bodies are growing, they need more sleep, a focus on proper nutrition, plenty of sunshine, and exercise. Adults do not need those things in the same proportions.
You can Google articles on the relationship of school hours and sleep deprivation, and read about the symptoms of sleep deprivation in children. They tend to be irritable, hyperactive, inattentive, and accident prone.
Could that be why Ritalin is the drug of choice amongst school-age children? Nah- it couldn’t be that simple…..
December 7th, 2007 at 8:55 am
Wonderful post! I have been meaning to look up Ron Paul for a few days now. Thank you for reminding me.
Our current governor originally had a ton of support from the homeschooling families when he was running for office. He said that he was going to homeschool his children if he was elected. Instead of homeschooling his sons, he ended up sending them to a private school. I was very disappointed.
I completely agree with your sleep post. I remember reading a story about a high school that started classes at 10 or 11am until 5. The test scores improved and so did attendance. Unfortunately I cannot remember where it was.
January 4th, 2008 at 5:31 am
[...] Ron Paul is still a front runner in many homeschooling comminuties, though the other candidates are slowly gaining support as well. I am sure that as the year wears on we will begin to hear from a lot more homeschooling supporters. I myself have plans to write a post soon on who I am voting for, though it will probably be at my personal blog rather than here. Because it’s, well, a personal matter and I don’t want to be labels as a “homeschooler for…”. While I am, my politcal ideas go beyond my educational choices. I’m “a person who happens to homeschool for…”. As if that makes it any clearer. LOL [...]