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.

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

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.

Interpretation: How can they be considered educated when they do not believe in darwinian evolution?

Apparently the author believes that to deny evolution is to deny or to be ignorant of the scientific method. Perhaps he is the one who needs to go back to school.

[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.

Evidently, NewScientist doesn't think its important to relate "factual knowledge" to the "scientific method".

[LadyNavyVet]

Wow! I must be a slacker--my eldest is only starting college three years early. Congratulations on a job well done!

[FreeAtlanta]

lol, the arrogance of these people. It might take all of 30 minutes to teach evolution, but it takes years to beat in into our children's heads (aka, brain washing). That is what they really want.

Think of the people years that are wasted teaching something that should only be taught for a few minutes in biology classes! All that time could be spent teaching relevant information; #bones in human body, how the nervous system works, value of good nutrition, etc.

[Timmy]

Proud father of a PHC student, here. I guarantee you that the average kid at PHC could wipe the floor with the average public high school science teacher in a discussion of Darwin's theory of evolution AND the many changes that have taken place in science theory over the past 140 years to gloss over the now-obvious mistakes Darwin made. What I mean is, the kids at PHC understand evolutionary theory better than the average science teacher. They simply don't accept it.