Homeschooling science

CNN has a small article on homeschooling today. It says that homeschooling is growing, a trend that I’m not really surprised at – given the current amount of fearmongering going on about the public school system.

The article makes a good point that data about homeschoolers isn’t really very available (which makes sense) – but there is a little.

In the NCES study, 31 percent said they were concerned about drugs, safety or negative peer pressure in schools; 30 percent wanted to provide religious or moral instruction while 16 percent said they were dissatisfied with academic standards in their local schools.

Even the cliche that the majority of homeschooled children are evangelical Christians is outdated, if it was ever true.

I’m not sure if I would be so quick to drop that one – at least not here in the South.

I did get curious when I read the CNN article and looked on the Internet to check out the science texts offered to homeschoolers. While homeschoolers can, I’m sure, use some of the same texts that traditional schools use, the science books I found that were exclusively for homeschoolers were all creationist books. These books systematically deny lots of important science relating to evolution, the age of the earth, etc.

I saw lots of stuff like the odious Accelerated Christian Education curriculum, which I will probably write about in detail later (I suffered under this curriculum for four years at a fundamentalist private school).

So … what do homeschoolers who aren’t religious extremists do? What books do they use? I’m genuinely curious.

2 Responses to “Homeschooling science”

  1. wb says:

    We’re part of the 16%. Educational standards here in out rural Kentucky school system a seriously lacking. We’ve been using the curriculum from Calvert Schools for several years now and are very satisfied.

    http://www.calvertschool.org/engine/content.do?BT_CODE=CES1512

  2. Rick says:

    Thanks for the information! Apparently, the Calvert Schools stuff does cover real science. The topics list looked good (plate tectonics, geologic time, etc.), and I even saw on their bulletin board that some of the “30%” parents were complaining that evolution crops up in the history classes as well as eighth grade science.

    http://group.calvertschool.org/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=4;t=000081#000001

    This would be test lesson 40 for 6th grade history, which covers the chapters on various forms of early man. We do not believe that we evolved from apes.

    http://group.calvertschool.org/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=000155#000005

    When we have had a problem with something conflicting with our beliefs (8th grade evolution) we covered it with “this is what the science community states” but “this is what our religion teaches us”. That way he could take the test on the material and move on to the next topic in the book!

    Thanks again for the pointer.