Top Home-School Texts Dismiss Darwin, Evolution

FOXNews.com ^ | Saturday, March 06, 2010 | Associated Press

[metmom]

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Home-school mom Susan Mule wishes she hadn't taken a friend's advice and tried a textbook from a popular Christian publisher for her 10-year-old's biology lessons.

Mule's precocious daughter Elizabeth excels at science and has been studying tarantulas since she was 5. But she watched Elizabeth's excitement turn to confusion when they reached the evolution section of the book from Apologia Educational Ministries, which disputed Charles Darwin's theory.

"I thought she was going to have a coronary," Mule said of her daughter, who is now 16 and taking college courses in Houston. "She's like, 'This is not true!"'

[LongElegantLegs]

The beauty of homeschooling is that you teach your kids how to think, not just regurgitate statements made in books that may or may not be true.

Worth repeating! If your opinions won't stand up to a little questioning, why have them? I plan to teach my kids about evolution, but it will be as a theory; and I'm going to present them with the arguments against it as well. If they're not able to deal with that, then I'll know I have failed horribly.

[editor-surveyor]

"Polly Brown said her son would gladly take college courses that include evolution, and he'll be able to provide the expected answers even though he disagrees. 'He probably knows it better than the kids who have been taught evolution all through public school," Polly Brown said. "But that is in order for him to understand both sides of that argument because he will face it throughout his higher education.' "

Heaven help him if he takes the blinders off of his fellow students!

[LouAvul]

The only flame I have for you is your statement that evolution is a theory. It’s not a theory. It’s an hypothesis: a guess. A guess that requires more faith than Christianity.

[metmom]

I didn’t use BJU for science, I used Abeka, and my daughter had a fine understanding of the ToE.

They present it correctly and explain why they reject it.

She took the NYS Biology regents and got all the questions on the evolution section of the exam correct except one, all based on what Abeka taught.

What’s ironic, is that Christian schools across the country use Abeka for science education and they have to have their students pass whatever is given for year end exams in the subject. Abeka NEEDS to present it correctly so that these kids can pass.

The problem is, is that to the scientist/evolutionist way of thinking, if you don’t accept the ToE as fact, that means that you don’t understand it.

If you really understood it, you’d find the evidence for it so overwhelmingly convincing that you’d have no choice but to accept it.

It’s simply inconceivable to them that someone could understand ToE as explained and still reject it as an adequate explanation of how life arose on the earth.

[I still care]

Your statement is unworthy. I know many people with doctorates in the sciences (like me) who do not believe in evolutionary theory. In fact, some of the more brilliant people I know are creationists.

Unlike public school texts, most Christian biology texts not only teach the creationist side of the argument, but also touch strongly on evolution, because the writers are aware the children will be attacked from every direction once they go on. My students are thoughtful and investigative in these matters. They are certainly not burger flippers.

In fact, I have several doing their doctorates now at Ivy League and equivalent universities.

[editor-surveyor]

"And the world is flat."

The amusing thing about all the 'flat world' comments is that the idea of belief in a flat world was born in 1833!

there is not a shred of evidence that any of the ancients ever held such a belief. (which is logical, since anyone that has ever stood on a mountain, or looked over the ocean can plainly see that we live on a sphere)

[MichiganConservative]

Doing science is overrated as well. An undergraduate education in science is helpful if you’re of sufficient aptitude for it and if you’re headed towards a career that could benefit from a rigorous curriculum of chemistry of physics. (Biology: not so much rigor.) If you want a job where you can do interesting things that people care about and don’t have to live on the public dole, become an engineer.

[editor-surveyor]

I think that you may have misunderstood MM’s post.

[metmom]

Every burger-flipper in the nation was "educated" at our fine Marxist schools with a heaping-helping of evolution and old-earth drivel being dumped upon them every step of the way. What do you think the creationists who can afford to be single-income families (who pay for public schools they don't use while providing their own materials) do for a living? Pick rags?

LOL! That little detail seems to regularly escape the attention of the evo crowd.

[FourPeas]

Perhaps Mrs. Mule should do something homeschoolers often refer to as research. Then again, who could possible imagine that a company called Apologia Educational Ministries would possibly find the creating story in the Bible to be credible?

[metmom]

You haven’t frequented the crevo threads on FR much, have you?

[metmom]

Even if you go into science, the ToE is not necessary unless you are going into a biological field that requires it.

[achilles2000]

there is not a shred of evidence that any of the ancients ever held such a belief”

But there is plenty of evidence that they believed that the world is a sphere, and they had a good approximation of the circumference.

[editor-surveyor]

" If you want a job where you can do interesting things that people care about and don’t have to live on the public dole, become an engineer."

But they still call us itiots!

I think that the lion's share of freepers are in some engineering discipline.

[editor-surveyor]

That is an undeniable fact!

[I still care]

Abeka’s a good book. Very heavy into plant and animal life.

I use the BJU, although I do find it a little heavy handed in the religious dept, because I love the way it is outlined so clearly and it also has the best diagrams. It had diagrams that I wished I had had when I was in school.

A third consideration is it is slightly cheaper, very important right now.

There is a whole chapter on evolution which I approach by assigning oral topics to the kids. Then they give a speech in front of their class on each topic, and do debates pro and anti evolution. By the time we finish they have formed their own opinions, and are ready to do more reading on their own - the only way to really learn.

Oh, how the left hates independent thinkers.

[Snowbelt Man]

“I mean, really, if you want them to accomplish nothing more in life than being a burger flipper at McD’s, then teach them creation instead of evolution.”

The most productive, successful people that I know, all of whom have net worths of 7 figures and at least one of whom has a net worth of 9 figures (a graduate of MIT) are all Christians who would scoff at the idea that man came from a single cell organism through random acts of chance - not just because of their faith - but because of the sheer mathematical impossibility.

I know dozens of home schooled kids, including my third daughter, and none of them are flipping burgers. In fact, my daughter who was home schooled in her elementary years breezed through her public high school as the valedictorian.

Evolution as an explanation for the origin of human life is a joke and anyone who believes it probably believes in man made global warming. It’s a religion - not science.

[MichiganConservative]

I agree with that. Never once did a chemistry experiment succeed or fail because of what I thought about evolution.

[achilles2000]

Good - just as long as it is not a “theory”

[I still care]

If I misunderstood I apologize. And no, I guess I haven’t frequented them, because I don’t really understand what you mean by “crevo”.