Over the weekend, we learned that Ron Paul’s next big project is a full K-12 Ron Paul homeschool curriculum that will be offered to parents for free from grades K-5. Website: RonPaulCurriculum.com

“You’re trying to decrease my future tax obligations and improve my education?” *mmmwwwaaahhhh*

The curriculum is being co-authored with libertarian economist Gary North and libertarian historian Tom Woods.

On his own blog, Woods lists the benefits of the new Ron Paul homeschool curriculum as follows:

(1) Grades K-5 will be available for free. You have six years to try out the program without having to spend a dime.

(2) Students will learn the origins and travails of liberty in the Western world and in the United States in particular.

(3) Students will learn the economics of the Austrian School.

(4) Students can learn at their own pace. If they’re advanced and move more quickly, they can quiz out of the first two years of college and enter college as juniors.

(5) The emphasis in this program is not simply on teaching from a different point of view, or teaching material that no other school or curriculum offers, although the Ron Paul Curriculum does both of these things. But it also emphasizes oral and written communication, so that students will be able to spread and defend their ideas effectively. Students will have their own blogs, start YouTube channels, and even learn the basics of video production, website design, and Internet marketing.

(6) It’s cheap. For access to the forums, it’s $250 per year. Each course is just $50. No textbooks — they’re awful, and we use pdfs and primary documents to teach students — so you’ll save hundreds of dollars that way as well.

(7) Parents who wish they’d had the chance for this kind of education can listen to the lectures their children are hearing. We’ve made them of a length that works well with the average commute.

Very innovative and forward-looking!

Here’s Tom Woods’ 3-minute video pitch for the Ron Paul homeschool curriculum:

In a piece at The Daily Bell, Ron Paul wrote Monday to explain the importance of homeschooling and the homeschooling movement in the United States:

‘The federal government’s hostility to homeschooling is shared by officials at all levels of government. Despite the movement’s success in legalizing homeschooling in every state, many families are still subjected to harassment by local officials. The harassment ranges from “home visits” by child protective agencies to criminal prosecution for violating truancy laws.

Every American who values liberty should support the homeschoolers’ cause. If the government can usurp parental authority over something as fundamental as the education of their children, there is almost no area of parenthood off limits to government interference.

Homeschooling has proven to be an effective means of education. We are all familiar with the remarkable academic achievements, including in national spelling bees and other competitions, by homeshcooled children. In addition, homeschooled students generally fare better than their public school educated peers on all measures of academic performance.

It makes sense that children do better when their education is controlled by those who know their unique needs best, rather than by a federal bureaucrat. A strong homeschooling movement may also improve other forms of education. If competition improves goods and services in other areas of life, why wouldn’t competition improve education? A large and growing homeschooling movement could inspire public and private schools to innovate and improve.

When the government interferes with a parent’s ability to choose the type of education that is best for their child, it is acting immorally and in manner inconsistent with a free society. A government that infringes on the rights of homeschooling will eventually infringe on the rights of all parents. Homeschooled children are more likely to embrace the philosophy of freedom, and to join the efforts to restore liberty. In fact, I would not be surprised if the future leaders of the liberty movement where homeschooled.’

Ron Paul, the man who among so many other successful predictions, predicted the bleak monetary future of the world in the 1970s when Nixon severed the dollar from the value of gold, is a man truly ahead of his time, an erudite philosopher, statesman, and economist who, like the original framers of the US form of government as presently constituted, can peer across the decades and see the future clearly. He understands the importance of this project to our society, but more urgently, to parents looking for valuable and affordable solutions to help their children make a good life for themselves.

The Ron Paul homeschool curriculum will teach children from a young age to use the Internet and the tools and platforms it offers.

In a critical review of the curriculum at The Atlantic Wire, one commentator unimaginatively quips, “your now-five-year-old should, by the year 2026, be able to operate a YouTube channel.” Cute. But where’s he getting that? Remember the Ron Paul curriculum lets the students learn at their own rate. Now I don’t know how long it took this Wire columnist to learn things back in grade school, but the curriculum’s aim is clearly to get your five-year-old operating a YouTube channel right now.

The curriculum will also be given away for free from grades K-5.

The Wire columnist quips again (he’s just sooo funny): “Echoing the business model of other addictive substances, the Ron Paul Curriculum provides grades K through 5 for free. After that, you have to pay — $250 a year.” More like the business model of Google, Twitter, Facebook, every app on your smartphone that has a free “lite” version, and a ton of other successful, forward-thinking businesses that give away their product for free to let you try it out first and then offer additional product or services at a price after establishing their quality. I like it a lot better than the public education system, which echoes the business model of mafias to pay for its business system. (Pay us, and you won’t get hurt. -Love, Your Government)

The Ron Paul curriculum also actually teaches students how to become economically valuable players in the post-industrial age world, develop viable technical skills, and find a mentor with whom to apprentice locally.

The Wire writer finally criticizes the Ron Paul curriculum for this, for not being government accredited and for putting students on the road to actual employment or self-employment, rather than on the road to four years of partying at a university in exchange for a lifetime of student debt and a job serving coffee.

That’s the way I see it, anyway. I don’t understand that we can already be behind the student debt crisis, that we can see all around us just how economically and socially nonviable (read: positively disastrous and harmful) the previous (state-accredited, molded, funded, sanctioned) educational paradigm has been for students, and some hilarious comedian is bashing a homeschool curriculum for cutting through the mess and providing an innovative new solution to the need for quality education at a reasonably affordable cost to parents looking for something better for their children. How can one be so dense?

Did this guy go to public school or something?