Discussion of experiences related to homeschooling and science education

[cartophile (Bruce Holt)]

Regarding published curricula, I certainly agree that a search for one that “teaches exactly what you believe across the board” is unrealistic. In the realm of science, I don’t know the subject well enough to define what that standard would be, and I think I’m enough of an open-minded learner that it would be a perpetually moving target.

That said, what I want to avoid with science materials are any that are developed with some purpose other than to provide the most accurate, age-appropriate scientific content. So, for example, when a Human Anatomy and Physiology textbook from Apologia states on the back cover that “sections entitled ‘Creation Confirmation’ provide evidence for young-earth creationism in the context of the topic that the students are studying,” it reveals an agenda that is at least supplemental to—and I believe in opposition to—teaching good science. The same text, in a section entitled “Apes and Apemen,” includes the following quotes:

“As you may know, some science books teach students the absurd notion that people are just advanced animals simply because people have some things in common with apes.”
“They believe that over many, many, many generations, those advancements ‘piled up,’ turning apes into humans.”
“However, even though mutations are never positive, evolutionists believe that apes turned into men because of millions of positive mutations piling up over the years!”
“Scientific studies have shown over and over again that mutations are never positive for any species.”
“There is no evidence for [evolution].”

I’m open to correction from practicing scientists if I’m wrong here, but my understanding is that no one with professional knowledge of evolutionary science would find any of these statements to be accurate. My conclusion is that they can only be the product of someone who is thoroughly ignorant of evolutionary science (and therefore ought not to be authoring an Anatomy and Physiology textbook) or who is trying to promulgate an insidious caricature of the Theory of Evolution.

So, in my view the key issue is ideology. I believe Chris’ thoughts are spot-on here:

@cstump

In some of the Christian materials I’ve spent time going through, I’ve seen some concerning misrepresentations of what science involves and an underlying distrust of scientists (in elementary materials) that is probably meant to lay the groundwork for discounting bigger scientific claims that will come in middle and high school.

I’ve lightly glanced through the rest of the A&P textbook I quoted above, and it may well have some quality content in it. But the admitted, underlying YEC ideology has poisoned the well for me; I don’t want to spend time sifting through what content in the book is tainted and what is not. I prefer to just find a better book.

I intend to respond more to Christy’s inquiry (from her initial response) about what resources and textbooks CC uses at the Challenge level, but I do know that Apologia science books are part of it, which is one reason I provided the details I did above.

The publisher that I am most enthusiastic and hopeful about is Novare Science and Math. I first learned of them through the BioLogos resources page, and Christy mentioned them briefly in her excellent overview of homeschool science materials. The founder, John Mays, spoke at the BioLogos conference last Summer. I have exchanged emails with the author of their recently completed Earth Science textbook, Kevin Nelstead, who has some great resources at his GeoChristian site, and I’d like to have my son start working through this book once the CC year finishes in a few weeks. I love just about everything in Novare’s textbook philosophy page, and I’m hopeful that they may provide a suitable supplement or replacement to the CC science materials for as long as we stay with their program. I believe Novare intends to publish a biology textbook at some point in the future, and I’m sure there will be a lot people eager to see how that turns out.

If anyone has any “hands-on” experience with Novare texts—particularly in a homeschool setting, I would love to hear your thoughts about them. I’ve gathered that they are primarily used in private schools, but Jeffrey Mays (John’s brother) has assured me that “there are many homeschoolers using our texts just fine.”

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@cartophile

but Jeffrey Mays (John’s brother) has assured me that “there are many homeschoolers using our texts just fine.”

The last Novare newsletter had an article on how homeschool parents could evaluate student work in upper level courses.

It’s obvious they are trying to address some concerns of the homeschooling community who uses their textbooks, but the fact remains that if you go with them (similar to any secular textbook) you will be taking on the full load of planning and teaching the subject to your child. This is out of the league of many parents once the student enters higher level subjects. It makes me think that maybe homeschool parents should reevaluate their expectations of how far they can realistically take their kids in science. Apologia is so attractive to many because as a parent you don’t really have to teach it yourself. (Or at least many parents opt for it under that illusion.) But that’s probably not the best situation. I think parents may have to be more open to getting their kids in dual enrollment or satellite classes for upper level science so they can have a teacher who knows their stuff well and can give them the feedback they need to really develop their potential.

[bel6363]

Our kids are early elementary, so we are new to homeschooling. I can’t bring a lot of experience to the table, but I thought I’d share a few curriculum options I found when I was looking. Like you, I struggled to find a science curriculum that wasn’t steeped in YEC. I currently use Elemental Science and really like it. ES is based on the Well-Trained Mind approach to science and it offers lesson plans, student workbooks, lapbook templates, coloring pages, etc. through 8th grade (I believe). I use the same level with all my kids, and then adjust my expectations and assignments based on their ability. The spines they select are secular, so they don’t include YEC. When the kids are older, I’d like to do an evolution unit using Lawson’s Darwin and Evolution for Kids; I’ve used several others books from this series and have found them helpful. Finally, I’ve heard good things about Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding (BFSU) by Nebel. It’s not open-and-go, but it does emphasize basic scientific principles (and it’s quite inexpensive). I believe that there’s an active support website for BFSU, and that the author contributes frequently. Hope that gives you some things to check out!

[AMWolfe (Andrew M. Wolfe)]

@Mervin_Bitikofer

don’t sweat because a curriculum doesn’t line up with what you see as good science. That just brings in welcome opportunities for teachable moments, and practice for students to learn that official print doesn’t always equal truth.

@Christy tagged me in this post though we don’t actually homeschool because I have chimed in on other education-related threads before. Let me just echo Mervin’s comments here. This is true in traditional schooling as in homeschooling. My kids go to a small Christian school – well, actually because we’ve jumped around quite a bit they’ve gone to multiple small Christian schools – all of which come from pretty much a YEC approach. I actually find myself more motivated to jump in and get involved in teaching my kids about the “Big Story” (to use BioLogos’s video title) frankly because of the school’s YEC bent, and in an odd sort of way I’m grateful for that.

Then again, my kids are still young. There will come a day when I will want them to dig into the finer points of evolutionary theory in all its beautiful elegance, and I will need that to be done by a competent science teacher with a solid curriculum, not by Dad-in-the-commute-on-the-way-to-school. I could even do it myself, and may have to, but I’ll need a good curriculum to do it. So I’ll be curious to watch for recommendations here…

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@DennisVenema

You can’t teach what science really is if you’re trying to convince your students to reject most of its conclusions.

I was thinking of this quote tonight, when on my homeschool forum, a woman posted asking for advice about what to include in the “essential oils as an alternative to medicine” class she is planning to teach at her local high school co-op. She wants to know what it would need to include to be worthy of high school level Health or Science credit. “It will include science experiments as well as study of how the oils work from a scientific perspective, practical case studies, some hands on projects creating blends for personal use and such.”

Argghhh! How do you nicely tell someone that it will never be worthy of high school health or science credit because it won’t meet any standards that anyone has ever proposed for high school health or science? It will be teaching kooky homeschool-world propaganda, NOT SCIENCE! And the only reason that people will line up to take the class is because they too have been fed a consistent diet of science denialism and skepticism, and think “science” includes anything anyone who claims to have a PhD has ever posted on the internet.

[DennisVenema]

@Christy

She wants to know what it would need to include to be worthy of high school level Health or Science credit. “It will include science experiments as well as study of how the oils work from a scientific perspective, practical case studies, some hands on projects creating blends for personal use and such.”

Aside from a discussion of the placebo effect, not much.

[jpm (Phil McCurdy)]

I tend to refer folks a lot to the science based medicine site, which generally has good references. Here is a link to one of the articles there on essential oils. Not that your forum friend will like it:

dōTERRA: Multilevel Marketing of Essential Oils

I am a primary care doc, and find this stuff frustrating to deal with. It is a lot like arguing religion in that it is faith based, so is sort of appropriate for this site
Often times I just focus on trying to prevent harmful actions and try to direct to appropriate therapy, but allow patients to believe what they will. Sort of how I deal with YEC folks at church, right or wrong.

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

Thanks, I’ll bookmark it for the benefit of the people who haven’t been sucked in yet.

My sister-in-law is a GP in Portland and she has a similar approach and some sad stories.

One lady showed me a book that she was convinced outlined the incontrovertible science behind the “essential oil movement.” I flipped through it and told her it was disconcerting to me that a book presenting “science” had neither a bibliography, nor a single footnote, and did even not list an author or editor whose credentials and education you could look up. I’m pretty sure it was written by Young Living, a company that sells the oils at inflated prices. But then the response is the same as when you point out the ridiculousness of YEC claims. The pharmaceutical companies and the healthcare industry are run by terrible people who just want to take your money and poison your family and move us away from all the traditional wisdom that has made our country great. They won’t publish the truth because it would call them out as the liars they are and they would get sued. What shocks me is how many generally intelligent people are so all in and evidently incapable of vetting their sources.

[gcarlet (Greg Carlet)]

I do not have anything to add at this point, but am very interested in this discussion. We are transitioning our daughter back to homeschooling as I type this. She did the A Beka program for third and fourth grade. We tried putting her back in public school to give her another chance, but it just doesn’t work for her. We attempted to do Sonlight for fifth grade, which I was pretty pleased to see their science curriculum compared to others, but Sonlight didn’t work for our family either, so we are going to have to stick with A Beka for her, as that is where she had the most progress. I am just going to have to do my part when it comes to the science education.

[LaurieMcFarland]

This is the curriculum I am going to try with my 9th grader at home next year. It does not have a textbook. Every week, the student is given many questions to answer via research using primarily the Internet and other resources he or she may find. I had a science teacher friend look through the topics and she thought it looked very thorough. Inquiry based learning is a big thing right now, so I thought I’d give it a go. Also, there are many dissections included which is very rare these days. So many labs are done virtually. http://www.scienceforhighschool.com/product-category/biology/

[Lstrite (Lisa)]

We participate in a CC group as well and I tutor a Foundations class. My kids are not in Challenge yet but I’ve visited the class and looked into the books and curriculum to determine if it’s a good fit for our family and whether I might teach any of the levels in the future. I can give a brief overview. Challenge A-B, which are roughly 7th-8th grade, utilize a classical model for science but do not use a curriculum. Here is what they cover:

Chall A: Fall- Natural Science- each week a topic is introduced in class related to the plant or animal kingdom, at home the students write a 3-5 paragraph report on that topic utilizing 2+ sources
Spring- Anatomy- each week a system or part of the human body is introduced and the students learn to draw and label it, at home they practice that drawing and learning definitions of each item they label, they have a quiz on each body system in class where they draw & label it and write out the definitions
As part of the apologetics strand, they also read “It Couldn’t Just Happen” and memorize these catechism questions: https://quizlet.com/5248215/challenge-a-catechism-questions-flash-cards/

Chall B: ~10 weeks- History of science- each week they discuss a scientist and then write a paper using 2+ sources
~6 weeks- Science Fair- learn the scientific method and work on their own science fair project
Origins (not sure how long this runs)- read Defeating Darwinism, they learn how to outline as they are reading the book and then discuss in class
Chemisty (a couple weeks?)- this is a short unit on chemistry written by a CC employee who I believe has a background in English Lit (!). I pointed out a few errors and hopefully they will be corrected in the next edition

As for Chall 1-4 (high school), these classes use Apologia but the class time is primarily for doing the lab, so you could easily use something else at home. I think physics is the only exception, they use Saxon and it does not have a lab component.

With regard to the memory work in Cycle 3 that relates to origins, they definitely made a huge mistake in their definition of The Theory of Evolution and they are aware of it There is a process for corrections where you submit your correction and sources to back it up, I was planning to do that but the academic team let me know that they had a plethora of feedback and it will be corrected in the next edition. FWIW their “definition” came from “It Couldn’t Just Happen” but it was a definition that included 3 statements and they only included the part to do with abiogenesis, which clearly made their “definition” incorrect.

In general, I find CC to be weak in science which is very typical of a classical curriculum. However, because my husband and I are strong in science and math, we have no problem covering those subjects in more depth at home. My kids will probably do bio in 8th grade with the Miller & Levine text. When their CC class covers bio in 10th grade, I will do AP bio with them at home and the labs in class will be good practice.

I appreciate the strength CC brings to the other subject areas and the ability to do group activities that wouldn’t work at home (Foundations- weekly presentations, Challenge- mock trial, debate etc). I think the teacher is a huge factor in how the class discussions go on topics related to origins. You might see a strong ID emphasis, but it will depend on the teacher.

[Doug_Bodde (Doug B)]

My wife and I home-school our children. The heart of the question: Is there a Christian “worldview” to communicate through education–one that is found only in a “Christian” curriculum? I have come to the conclusion that there is not. A Christian worldview cannot be taught using human instruction. It must grow naturally from a “life in Christ”–found in the young person and their household. The effort to teach a “Christian” worldview through education seems to produce distortions and poor education–in ways I don’t quite understand yet. Why is Christian history bad history, Why is Christian science bad science? I’ll mull that over more.

So we will use the best “secular” curriculum we can find, appending Bible study and a home-life revolving around discipleship and relationship with Jesus Christ. The worldview you need comes from being born again. Sorry if that’s not helpful in discussing specific curricula.

[jpm (Phil McCurdy)]

profound thoughts, Doug.

[Keith_Furman]

What a joy to know we are not alone here! Thanks, all!

My wife (mostly) and I homeschooled our 5 kids mostly through high school to be good little creationists and anti-evolutionists. In the middle of that I had a paradigm shift when I read Francis Collin’s book in Jan. 2010 and, in one weekend, had to admit had been wrong about evolution for over 34 years, even as one educated to the PhD level in a biological science with emphasis in molecular genetics.

So, we had to undue all that while still having the last 3 in high school or lower grades.

We subsequently had two graduate from Grove City College (GCC), including one who majored in Biology and defended Francis Collin’s view there, graduating last year. BTW, GCC actually had a noble-minded view there in allowing students to adopt their own view and my son said the science professors appeared to accept evolution, for the most part. I thought that was pretty good for a conservative Christian college.

It’s great to see high school science resources described under that topic elsewhere here on the forum.

Key for me, in terms of Biblical hermeneutics and making sense of it all, has been Professor Denis O. Lamoureux’s (DDS, Phd, Phd) “Science and Religion” course that he’s taught over 60 times. The WHOLE course is FREE to view online at CHRTC 350 Science and Religion Online Course Fall and Winter Just select “Class Audio-slides” in the upper left to view the multimedia. NOTE: Currently, it plays on Android, PC and Mac but doesn’t play on iPhone without a Flash player app like the Photon Flash player app. But, I used that app to go through the entire course on my iPhone. I understand from Denis that the updates being made this summer will allow it to play on ALL devices. You can search his name here on the BioLogos site for many of his articles. I’m also hoping he’ll group the fairly short modules into longer-playing sections that play automatically through so mobile device users, like me, don’t have to go back to the course page so often to start another module, especially since there are hundreds of them.

Our last child (15 year old) just started that course adapted as homeschooling Bible class that we’ll continue through the summer in a pass-fail manner.

I love the plans BioLogos has for homeshooling resources!

@EvoCreatn & www.TheGospelAndEvolution.com

[Professormom]

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back here. We had flu and family and all kinds of crazy going on:)

CC is usually in the YEC of things. Maybe some communities are less committed to that, but I haven’t come across any that aren’t pretty avidly YEC.

That being said, I can give an example of one way I have handled this, fwiw.

This year, my son is studying biology, and we are using the Miller Levine textbook… Which I love:-). We had an opportunity to do a lab group with a friend whose father was a high school bio teacher in his younger years. I was VERY excited because I wasn’t especially looking forward to doing labs and because I assumed that he would be more standard science-oriented than AiG science-oriented, lol. This was a poor assumption on my part, which I found out when they sent out the welcome email that included his testimony and views on origins.

So, I got in touch with my friend. I told her that we aren’t YEC and that we were using a different text for the year. I asked her how much YEC “material” he was planning on using. She didn’t think he would be doing much of that because it was a bi-monthly lab, not a full class. I assured her that, since I knew that most (really all) of the other families are YEC, my guy wouldn’t be proselytizing to the contrary, lol. However, I made it clear that I didn’t expect anyone to try and convert him either.

I would not have joined the group had it been an actual class. Since it was lab only, I figured there couldn’t be too much YEC love going on… There is only so much one can cover in 2 hours, twice a month.

It has worked out ok. I don’t necessarily regret it, but I don’t know that I would do it again either. We hit a wall around the evolution module (they were using apologia). I had let them know at the beginning of the year that we would be skipping that class. But, I did get a note from the instructor anyway trying to change my mind because “it is so important that our young people understand this.” It was a long note in the Ken Ham vein. I knew where he was going because my son had mentioned that he had called Ken “a hero of our age” during class. I did check and my son held his tongue and did not laugh. I was proud of him;-)

I did write back explaining where we stood and thanking him for the generosity of spirit he showed in his willingness to teach young people. He tried one more time and I left it at that.

It is important that my kids are respectful of the relationships they have with other people even if they disagree, so we had lots of talks on how to handle things if someone comes at him with YEC arguments. Especially how to deflect because, even though he is bright, he is not at an age where he can fully flesh out arguments for EC. We will continue working out how to present EC respectfully but firmly if necessary.

If you share your position with the instructor and they agree to “do no harm” lol, and you are comfortable quietly supporting your view and can supplement content-wise, then you can take advantage of whatever classes might be a fit. If you think you may have to spend all of your time undoing what they do, you may want to exempt yourself from the science piece of CC. I doubt they would turn you away unless they felt threatened by your position… They are always looking to keep their numbers up.

Good luck. I am going to go read the other responses now, so I apologize if this is redundant to someone else’s post;-)

[Professormom]

@cartophile

In many ways, it was my involvement with homeschooling that compelled me to consider the evidence for evolution more seriously and figure out what I believe, odd as that may sound to many. But I’ll save that story for a separate post.

Same here. I felt like I had to have an educated stance if I was going to be the primary science teacher for my kids. Especially since the “all or nothing” rhetoric coming from the YEC side was so prevalent in our homeschooling community.emphasized text

[cartophile (Bruce Holt)]

Lisa,

Thank you so much for this insight into the Challenge program! It’s very helpful to me—though most of it served to raise my concern about the content.

I had seen It Couldn’t Just Happen and Defeating Darwinism in the CC online catalog for Challenge. ICJH seems particularly concerning. I’m going to try to find it at a bookstore and browse through it a bit, but based on a quick review on Amazon it strikes me as thorough propaganda. If anyone else has familiarity with this book, I’d love to hear what you think. A few days ago the Challenge A director for our group this year invited parents to watch “a game of Jeopardy using various questions addressing issues related to origins.” I asked if I could see the list of questions and answers, since I was looking into the program for next year, and she indicated that we would get a copy of the catechism questions with the Challenge A guide and that they are mostly from It Couldn’t Just Happen. So I assume those are the same ones you gave a link to, and I was not impressed.

Defeating Darwinism is a title I’ve been aware of for years, but I don’t know much about the book. My general sense is that it attempts to give a philosophical buttress to Intelligent Design thinking. Again, I’d love to hear from people who have read it.

I’ve already described my concern about the Apologia science series.

I think before long I’m going to have to have some potentially contentious conversations with the campus director and the Challenge A teacher. The woman teaching Challenge A next year was our son’s Foundations tutor this year, and we are friends with the family. The father is a science teacher in a public middle school, so I would think he is not vehemently YEC, but perhaps I shouldn’t assume that. Come to think of it, I believe he did also interview at a private school that quite possibly demands YEC fidelity among the faculty. I don’t mind being in the midst of some challenging conversations (though it’s not my preference), but I really don’t want my son getting caught in the middle of it. And, especially if my wife and I are still not in accord in the coming years, I think that’s a real concern.

Lisa, can you talk about how you have handled CC content that you disagree with? Were you a tutor during the cycle when the faulty definition for the Theory of Evolution came up? If so, how did you address that?

I hope I’m proved wrong, but the more I dig into this, the greater sense I get that I’m the only parent in our campus that has these concerns about CC’s science content.

[Lstrite (Lisa)]

cartophile,
As much as I don’t really like It Couldn’t Just Happen and Defeating Darwinism, I think it will still be a moderately good fit for my family because of all the other subjects that are covered well but I think a lot depends on the Challenge tutors. The tutors in our group seem to enjoy a good discussion that includes opposing viewpoints and are comfortable with the class having a range of views. Having said that, I also want to make sure my kids don’t get trampled in class for having an opposing view. I think our tutors do a good job though of teaching debate/discussion skills and how to be civil in a disagreement.

I read It Couldn’t Just Happen a while ago and if I recall correctly, it’s not distinctly YEC, but definitely anti-evolution. Defeating Darwinism is more about ID and “defeating” materialism/naturalism but in doing so it perpetuates the false dichotomy between evolution and Christianity. I also dislike the catechism questions CC developed and I think I will make modifications to a few of them when my child memorizes them. The quizlet link may not be up to date (they make changes to the guides some years), but it’s probably roughly what they were using for the game you saw in class.

In terms of high school sciences, we probably wouldn’t use Apologia at home, but I think it’s easy enough to use something else because mainly what they do in class is the labs and then their assignment is to write the lab report. Because the sequence for science is probably inadequate for some of my kids, I may have them start Bio in 8th grade and then when their CC class does Bio labs in 10th grade, we might do AP Bio at home.

So the cycle that covered origins in Foundations, I was tutoring a class of 1st graders However, for the sake of the moms in the room, I did mention that the definition was lacking and gave a clearer definition and explained that the memory work is actually defining “abiogenesis” rather than evolution. I talked to our director who encouraged me to submit a form to CC to explain the error and suggest a correction. She also let me know that if I wanted to make a change to the memory work for my own kids, they could still test for Memory Master if I just let her know how they were memorized it so she could proof them. I appreciate the flexibility but I don’t know that all directors/campuses would handle it that way.

[cartophile (Bruce Holt)]

@Christy

I know Apologia is a very popular textbook company for many providers, and though I have friends who swear it prepared their kids so well for pre-med and they are acing organic chem because of the solid foundation Apologia science gave them, it is blatantly YEC and anti-evolution.

I just finished browsing page by page through the Anatomy & Physiology text from Apologia that we have at home. I noted that nowhere does the book provide any academic credentials for either of the two listed authors, though one is described as an M.D. Also, there is no list of reviewers for the text.

Do these omissions cause any concern for those who use Apologia textbooks?