Discussion of experiences related to homeschooling and science education

Education Forum
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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.

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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.

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2 posts were split to a new topic: Science and the placebo effect

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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/

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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 :slight_smile: 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.

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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.

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profound thoughts, Doug.

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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

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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;-)

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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

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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.

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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 :slight_smile: 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.

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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?

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I have found that in people’s fervor to market the materials they agree with, credentials are often ignored or over stated. One book used in several homeschool elementary programs, Dry Bones and Other Fossils is billed as written by a “professional paleontologist.” Technically this is true, since the author has been paid for being a “paleontologist” by IRC and AIG. However, his actual PhD is in education, not paleontology, and his other degrees are in Biology and Chemistry. That doesn’t stop him from putting Dr. Gary Parker on his books about fossils. I was looking at a different YEC book for kids on geology, (I can’t find the title right now) with a Dr. So and So on the cover, and I looked him up and found out he was a dentist and had no credentials at all in the field he was writing.

Was it the Exploring Creation Anatomy and Physiology textbook? Jeannie Fullbright is a homeschooling mom of four and former sportscaster. Brooke Ryan is a pediatrician.

Yeah. Not that homeschooling women can’t be bright and capable or that writing an intro level textbook requires a PhD. (I actually think the best textbooks are usually written by experienced educators, not subject experts in the given field.) But you would think having it reviewed for content by someone with relevant expertise would be standard procedure.

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I think this is a huge problem with textbooks written for/by the homeschooling community in general. Many of us like “living books” that are written by one author, but if you’re going to write a book on your own, make sure you are an expert in that area and have excellent editors who are also experts.

We’ve used Jeannie Fulbright’s elementary science books in the past. I recall using the first edition of Astronomy and seeing an entire page where she incorrectly defined and used the term “maria” to mean one side of the moon rather than the dark plains that are visible from earth. I don’t even have a background in science, but had read the kids a few other astronomy books and immediately noticed that error. These kinds of mistakes would never make it into a textbook written by an expert, a committee or edited by one of those. (BTW they corrected this error in a later printing).

CC has a short chemistry unit (called Discovering Atomos) that they use in 8th grade (Chall B) which was written by one of their employees with a BA and MA in English. Granted it’s only at the middle school level, but is that really the right person to write such material? I found an error where a word was defined correctly but then the author misunderstood what the definition meant and used it incorrectly. It would literally be as simple as having the document edited by someone with a BA in Chemistry and this would be prevented. Of course, it costs money to hire experts to edit for you, and I think many of these companies are small and if no one pushes back, they don’t feel the need for that level of editing. I emailed them and explained the error and hopefully they will fix it in a future edition.

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Of our seven kids, three were homeschooled… the last three. Various curricula was used, and my wife was/is the teacher, not me, so I don’t know all of it. But some of it included, alpha-omega, and “Switched-on schoolhouse”, which is a computer program allowing the student to work independantly, and organize a very flexible schedule. It has a built in planner for any type of school year, and various standards for passing and continuing to the next lesson can be set by the teacher/parent. Most of the homeschooling curricula does have science and social and english subjects and perspectives that differ from the common public school curricula, primarily because that is the precise reason why many families are homeschoolers, to reduce the public influence and to provide and emphasize the value of the alternatives.

One of the interesting aspects of healthy homeschoolers is their associations and local support groups. Ours meets monthly, with a potluck, gym night, and parent meeting. While most homeschoolers are YEC, there are no restrictions or overt judgements about OEE. However, our group is a christian group, clearly indicating that our christian faith is fundamental to the purposes and atmosphere of the group, just as one would find in a Christian dayschool.

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Yes, that’s the one. Thanks for the information on the authors.

This week I received my copy of the recently published Earth Science: God’s World, Our Home by Novare Science and Math. I’m really excited about reading it with my son. Additionally, I found the author’s story about how the book came to be quite interesting and inspiring. The time and diligence that were put into planning, writing, reviewing, and editing the text seems to contrast sharply with the observations made here about the Apologia text.

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@Homeschool_Forum I realize that this original post is almost a year old, but I don’t know how to find one more recent that applies (I’m new to this forum). I have done Classical Conversations with my 2 kids for the past 6 years and have tutored and directed in both Foundations and Challenge A. That said, I am realizing every year we are in this how much YEC CC really is and I am now at a crossroads of what to do! My son is in Challenge 1 this year and we are suffering through Apologia Physical Science which is so full of political agenda, YEC opinion, and misinformation that I am considering leaving the program altogether next year. Does anyone have any suggestions about how to address the use of Apologia Science; documents or something that I can use to rebut the misinformation? I feel like all year I have had to do extra “homework” to refute what this book says. I love everything else about CC and my community would love to see me direct Challenge II, but that would require using Apologia Biology and I’m not sure I’m up to the task of “providing an alternative viewpoint” each week for the class I would tutor. I do not want to reinvent the wheel, and already I am worn out this year from keeping up with the Physical Science book at home with my son and offering my alternate viewpoint to counteract the book “It Couldn’t Just Happen” that we use in Challenge A (my daughter’s class that I tutor). Has anyone had a similar experience with CC, and if you have left the program, what did you go to? Thanks for any thoughts or encouragement you can offer–I am very discouraged at this point!

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@Sharon_King

The homeschool forum is not super busy, so we keep the threads open and it is perfectly fine to revive them! If in reading past posts you come across someone who used CC whose opinion you’d especially like to hear, you can tag them in your post by using the @ sign and starting to type their user name and clicking on it when it appears. That way they get an e-mail notification to come check out the thread. You can also quote other posts by highlighting text and then clicking on the “quote selected” option. This sends a notification to the person you quote. You can edit any post to add tags by clicking on the pencil icon by the reply button.

i have never used CC so I can’t speak to the particulars of the program. Two options for high school biology that I am personally considering using are the Catholic program offered by Kolbe Academy or using online classes offered by Wilson Hill Academy. Both use the Miller and Levine Biology text which is a standard high school textbook.

Is there a way you can keep connected to the community aspect of CC by participating in some of the classes and opt out for science?

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@cartophile can you weigh in?

I’m in a similar situation and love my CC group! It would be great to find some resources that we could use that are at the right level for 7-10th graders that gives another view on the material they are encountering in It Couldn’t Just Happen, Defeating Darwinism and the various Apologia books. It seems like I will need to go through each of those books and make a list of discussion points and/or resources that need to be brought up.

@Sharon_King I’m also sending you a PM, check your inbox :slight_smile: