How bad is one of the more popular science textbooks for homeschooling Christians?
My colleague Jonny Scaramanga points out the issues with just a couple of the pages in a second grade textbook used in the Accelerated Christian Education program. Here’s a glimpse:
Second grade, and they’re learning about what rivers and lakes contain. And two of the three choices don’t even make sense. (And the other two questions are practically identical.)
Jonny’s concern is less about the simplistic nature of these questions and more about how unscientific they are. He’s absolutely right about that. It’s also a horrible way to “educate” children, he writes:
Even if we call this information ‘correct’, however, and even if we assume that the primary purpose of education is to to recall banks of information (rather than, say, learning to be creative, solve problems, work with other people, or to think critically), I still struggle to fathom how anyone can look at the above pages and think this is good education. The above examples are typical of any [ACE workbook], regardless of grade: fill-in-the-blank, page after page, subject after subject. Even if you think school is just about assimilating a body of knowledge, it’s such a boring way to go about it.
There are homeschooled kids who do just fine if and when they head to college. And then there are these kids, deprived of a real education, because their parents think using a curriculum like this is the best way to honor Jesus. How despicable of those parents to rot their children’s minds with drivel like this.