Ron Paul Homeschooling Podcast

The Ron Paul Homeschooling Podcast is a showcase for a single homeschool program, and it takes the job seriously. Episodes open with the same two questions for parents: are you getting burned out, and are your students getting frustrated? The answer on offer is the Ron Paul Curriculum and what the introduction calls its 'freedom philosophy'. Richard Emmons, introduced as a homeschooling dad, is the host. He describes the usual menu himself: an interview with one of the instructors, a sample lesson, or a stretch on his own experience. The interviews are where parents get the most practical detail. Dr. Gary North, introduced with a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Riverside and more than 50 books to his name, among them Honest Money and a 31-volume economic commentary on the Bible, appears in several of them. Each of those conversations follows one of his courses. For business, he explains the 80/20 principle through examples from military staffing and sales teams, then tells students to shed the work that yields little and concentrate on what brings in income. For economics, the talk turns to Social Security, Medicare and a retirement age that keeps climbing, and to his distinction that the demand is political while meeting it is economic. For government, a quoted line about a system in which everybody plunders everybody becomes a lesson that there is no free lunch, and the course also spends time on the clichés of socialism. Emmons asks the parent's question directly: what would students learn? Not every episode is a conversation. A two-part set carries North's 12th grade graduation speech to graduates of the Ron Paul Curriculum Academic Program. Its advice is plainspoken: keep your calling on the back burner if the job demands it, but don't take it off the stove. 'How Martin Luther's Rhetoric Changed the World' is dedicated to Luther and the 95 theses he posted on the Wittenberg church door in 1517, and it works through passages of the theses themselves. It stops on the fine print, noting that Luther was not denying purgatory, only telling people not to fear threats beyond the grave for failing to buy an indulgence. 'Are Homeschoolers the Last Radicals?' is flagged by Emmons as a break from the usual formats. It cites research putting homeschooled students above public-school averages on standardized tests, then answers a Slate writer who called the practice 'fundamentally illiberal' by arguing that outcomes are not the real dispute. North's courses share a clear outlook, favoring family, church and local government over a sprawling welfare state. Closings point listeners back to the curriculum's website. What a listener gets is a direct look at what these courses teach and the convictions they rest on.