Home-schooling special: Preach your children well

NewScientist.com ^ | 11 November 2006 | Amanda Gefter

[Sopater]

TO THE unsuspecting visitor, Patrick Henry College looks like a typical American liberal-arts college tucked away amidst the rolling green farmlands of Virginia. Its curriculum is far from typical, however, and anything but liberal. Witness this lecture on faith and reason in an idyllic red-brick college building reminiscent of colonial America. As the speaker takes to the podium, several students silence their cellphones. One puts down his copy of The Wall Street Journal and takes out his Bible. They bow their heads and pray to Jesus, then stand up and sing a hymn, belting out "Holy, holy, holy" with gusto. Eventually, the speaker addresses the crowd.

"Christians increasingly have an advantage in the educational enterprise," he says. "This is evident in the success of Christian home-schooled children, as compared to their government-schooled friends who have spent their time constructing their own truths." The students, all evangelical Christians, applaud loudly. Most of them were schooled at home before arriving at Patrick Henry - a college created especially for them.

These students are part of a large, well-organised movement that is empowering parents to teach their children creationist biology and other unorthodox versions of science at home, all centred on the idea that God created Earth in six days about 6000 years ago. Patrick Henry, near the town of Purcellville, about 60 kilometres north-west of Washington DC, is gearing up to groom home-schooled students for political office and typifies a movement that seems set to expand, opening up a new front in the battle between creationists and Darwinian evolutionists. New Scientist investigated how home-schooling, with its considerable legal support, is quietly transforming the landscape of science education in the US, subverting and possibly threatening the public school system that has fought hard against imposing a Christian viewpoint on science teaching.

[Sopater]

To judge home-school applicants, they rely mostly on standardised tests of factual knowledge. Such tests cannot, however, reveal whether or not a student understands scientific method, a compulsory subject in public schools but not for home-schoolers.

Abeka, the publisher of the 9th grade science book that this article singles out, teaches the scientific method. Sounds like evolutionists are scared of the acedemic success of home-schoolers.

[Tired of Taxes]

Ping...

[CertainInalienableRights]

When will we begin applying the scientific method to global warming?

[CertainInalienableRights]

oops, I should have put global warming in quotes: "global warming"

[dawn53]

Many such universities today accept home-schooled students, although this was not the case a decade ago

Oh phooey! Not true. My sister has homeschooled for years. Her oldest kids had no problems getting into secular universities. One's a structural engineer, the other has a degree and is a pilot.

The Colfax kids (Homeschooling for Excellence) went to Harvard, and they homeschooled in the 70's and 80's.

[brooklyn dave]

If a parent is smart they will teach what Darwinism consists of so that the child will know what it is rather than indoctrinate the child (as the school would) that this is the only scientific truth. I myself am not a Biblical literalist, but definitely do believe that the material world had/has a Creator. Darwinism is used in school indoctrination to support atheism unfortunately.

[LadyNavyVet]

Quite the hit piece. So now we homeschoolers are subverting the public school system. Sorry, I have no intention of offering up my children to the tender mercies of the NEA socialists, much to the writer's chagrin.

[csivils]

This article demonstrates the same kind of arrogance that I find among many home school critics. I had a neighbor offer to teach my kids science, to counter our indoctrination. She was surprised that my wife jumped on the opportunity… and even more surprised that my kids new her material better than she did… but still didn’t believe it.

Craig

p.s. Who formed the vast home school conspiracy and let me know about it?

[taxcontrol]

I believe that the single greatest contribution that can be made at this time to the education space would be the development of a freely available, down loadable, k-12 curriculum. If backed with a test and acceptance via third party or proctor that would provide accreditation, then you would have a the ability for anyone... regardless of religion or location or finances.

[antiRepublicrat]

Sounds like evolutionists are scared of the acedemic success of home-schoolers.

Nope. Not all homeschoolers do it so they can better indoctrinate their children in religion. Many do it simply because they believe they can provide a better education in a safer environment.

[Sopater]

If a parent is smart they will teach what Darwinism consists of

Excellent point brooklyn dave. That is exactly what I do. If you don't teach your children the controversy, teach the facts and the various proposed theories, and then explain why you believe in your partiulcar theory and reject the others, the minute that you kids here a new theory from someone they admire and respect (such as a college prof), all you've ever taught them is out the window.

Children want to be given all of the evidence, all of the possibilities, and then be taught how to think critically. Eventually, they will all come to their own conlcusions.

[mrs. a]

"is quietly transforming the landscape of science education in the US, subverting and possibly threatening the public school system..."

If the US public school system is really so fragile that it is threatened by the small minority who homeschool and attend parochial schools, then they need to make some major changes, like, yesterday.

[TommyDale]

Oh, boo-hoo! The home schooling phenomenon must be hurting them financially now.

[TomSmedley]

As the oh so erudite britishers slide back into the barbarism of moloch worship (statism), their anxiety increases concerning those who are unwilling to go down with their sinking cause. Disease resents health.

[LadyNavyVet]

Exactly. I've told my kids that, in the Bible, God told us what he did. It's up to scientists to figure out how he did it. Faith and reason do not have to be at odds with each other.

[Sopater]

Nope. Not all homeschoolers do it so they can better indoctrinate their children in religion.

Absolutes like that fully discredit anything further you may have to say. You have obviously been indoctrinated yourself by anti-homeschool propaganda.

I started homeshooling my children to remove them from what I saw as a volatile and hostile environment. I was not a Christian, nor religious in any way. I'm sure that I was not alone.

[Sopater]

Oops, sorry antiRepublicrat, I just more closely read your post and I believe that I misread it the first time. My apologies.

[linda_22003]

"my kids new her material better than she did"

They "new" her material? You're not the one doing the homeschooling, are you? ;-D

[TomSmedley]

If the US public school system is really so fragile that it is threatened by the small minority who homeschool and attend parochial schools, then they need to make some major changes, like, yesterday.

Cornered carnivors, and ideologs on their last legs, are most vicious and dangerous. Like Peter Pan's Tinkerbelle, public education will disappear when enough folks simply quit believing in it. As my favorite marxist jesuit put in,

Some fortuitous coincidence will render publicly obvious the structural contradictions between stated purposes and effective results in our major institutions. People will suddenly find obvious what is now evident to only a few . . . Like other widely shared insights, this one will have the potential of turning public imagination inside out. Large institutions can quite suddenly lose their respectability, their legitimacy, and their reputation for serving the public good. It happened to the Roman Church in the Reformation, to royalty in the Revolution. The unthinkable became obvious overnight: that people could and would behead their rulers. (Illich's "Tools for Conviviality", p. 111)

[azcap]

What a warped and narrow view of home schooling. From this article you would think that the entire motivation for the American home schooling movement is to teach children creationism and hide them from evolutionary biology. We home school our kids and know dozens of families who do the same. I don't know a single one of those families whose primary motivation to home school was creationism. I know a lot of them who wanted their kids to learn to read before 4th grade, and a lot of them who wanted their kids to learn American History from a viewpoint that America is not the greatest force for evil in the world. You can make the argument that home schooling is strongly driven by the desire of parents to have their kids get a Christian education, but creationism is only a small part of that and then only for some families. My kids know God created the world. They also know the chemistry of DNA and current theories of matter energy. I think these folks at the "New Scientist" magazine are in for a big shock in 15 to 20 years when the big brain jobs s at the JPL and the Salk Institute, etc are dominated by home schooled kids.