Saturday, March 6, 2010

We're here! We're secular! We homeschool!

I am sick of the mainstream media portraying homeschooling as the nearly exclusive province of religious fanatics. Ugh, just UGH!!! Top home-school texts dismiss Darwin: One book's lesson: ‘Christian worldview ... is the only correct view of reality’ We are secular homeschoolers. We do not homeschool for religious reasons. Yes, we teach our kid morality. The "83 percent of homeschoolers teach their kids morality or religion" statistic is horrendously misleading. I would have ticked that box yes, even though religion has nothing whatsoever to do with how or why we homeshool. Morality does not require one to abandon science! Neither does religion (unless you are a fundamentalist Young Earth creationist. Many religious people are NOT! Myself included! I have no trouble reconciling being a Lutheran and being a scientist, thankyouverymuch. Neither did my childhood pastor.) We teach science, including evolution, and our kid wants to be a paleontologist. We do not believe people rode dinosaurs, or that dinosaur bones are a divine or satanic conspiracy to test faith. Stop lumping us all in with HSLDA's pet evangelicals! And by the way, not all Christians agree with those people or their version of reality, either. Thanks for another round of ridiculous stereotyping, AP!

3 comments:

Stephanie said...

We're secular homeschoolers too, and the assumptions people make about our religious and political convictions -- because we homeschool -- are amusing to me.

And who DOESN'T teach their children morality? It's not exactly something you need a curriculum for, but it's something every parent does (I hope) through discussion and through example. It just goes to show how shoddy research methods really skew the statistics.

jugglingpaynes said...

I saw that in the paper today and I just groaned. Guess we'll have to re-educate the media. Again.

I would like to point out that one need not use a textbook to homeschool science. I've mainly used Eyewitness science books and raided the science section of our library. I would prefer to give my kids a copy of "The Origin of the Species" and let them decide for themselves.

Peace and Laughter,
Cristina

Topsy said...

Great point! I hadn't even caught that part of the article until now. So secular homeschoolers are basically a-moral?? Geez!