John Fugelsang on A Beka Books

[OnceModestTwiceShy]

http://current.com/shows/viewpoint/vide ... e-history/

This is a perfect takedown of the ridiculous education provided by A Beka Books.

[Anxious Girl]

Wtf? :shock: Those poor kids are gonna be in a rude awakening if their parents send them to fake Christian colleges so that later in life they won't be qualified to work even if they have a "college" degree. Again, WTF.

[VooDooChild]

Which is why this homeschooler doesn't buy their shite. I teach VooDooTeen out of my college texts, since I can't find any good secular, non-watered down curriculum. I'm an evil, secular, hippy-loving bitch that way.

[Black Aliss]

Wonkette.com has been doing a chapter by chapter review/takedown of A Beka's World History and Cultures In Christian Perspective for a while. You can read all 24 episodes starting here: http://wonkette.com/tag/christian-textbooks

The blog contributor has since moved on to reviewing Christian sex ed books. Equally hilarious.

[klavierspieler]

Wonkette.com has been doing a chapter by chapter review/takedown of A Beka's World History and Cultures In Christian Perspective for a while. You can read all 24 episodes starting here: http://wonkette.com/tag/christian-textbooks

That particular history book isn't just the 10th grade high school text book, it's also (with absolutely no revisions and no additions, it is exactly the same book down to the punctuation marks) the book used in World History 101 and 102 at PCC. The lit classes, the English composition classes, the speech classes, and the math classes were also repeats of high school for anyone who came up on A Beka Book, and for all I know there could have been other classes that pulled the same stunt. Those are just the ones I know did it from personal experience. Pretty much the first two year's worth of core curriculum at PCC was a repeat of 10th/11th/12th grade A Beka textbooks, which served the double purpose of them never having to worry about students seeing something to make them question and significantly increasing revenue for A Beka.

There were actually people, Christian school teachers and principals, even, who called and complained about certain passages (like the KKK one) or wanted A Beka to note inaccuracies and/or falsehood for fixing in the next revision. I know because I worked for A Beka while I was at PCC, and when I was bored at work I would go back and read past reports taken down by my fellow customer service reps gone on before. They were each dutifully typed up, documented, and filed in the computer system, never to be opened again until someone like me got bored. It was one of the things that made me first start questioning exactly what kind of "education" I was receiving if they refused to even acknowledge that they made mistakes.

It's been a long time now since I've thought about those books. I bookmarked the site and am eagerly anticipating curling up later to view my childhood through someone else's eyes.

[Destiny]

Wonkette.com has been doing a chapter by chapter review/takedown of A Beka's World History and Cultures In Christian Perspective for a while. You can read all 24 episodes starting here: http://wonkette.com/tag/christian-textbooks

The blog contributor has since moved on to reviewing Christian sex ed books. Equally hilarious.

THIS was awesome. Thanks for the link. Do you happen to have a link to the Christian Sex Ed books? I'm curious if I used those ones too (I actually used the Abeka history book in question). I looked at the author's page on the site and I don't see anything past February.

[AnnaSofia]

I was home schooled (briefly, for health reasons) 20 years ago. It was even harder to find secular homeschooling materials back then, and even though we were were far from being fundies, my mother was suckered into buying A Beka books at one point.

I have horrible memories of that tripe. I think it contributed heavily to my current atheism :lol:

[yewchapel]

The praise (in the books) for nuclear weapons and war in general makes my blood run cold.

[FeministShrew]

My kids started out in a church-run (free will baptist) christian school that used A Beka. My daughter still makes fun of the curriculum. (I have begged their forgiveness many times.)

[nelliebelle1197]

Wonkette.com has been doing a chapter by chapter review/takedown of A Beka's World History and Cultures In Christian Perspective for a while. You can read all 24 episodes starting here: http://wonkette.com/tag/christian-textbooks

The blog contributor has since moved on to reviewing Christian sex ed books. Equally hilarious.

Thank you for dropping me down yet another rabbit hole!

[persuas1ve]

Yikes! The local Christian private school in our county teaches exclusively from A Beka...good to know people are paying 6k a child for this...

[Dinaberries]

I was "educated" with A Beka from grades 5 through 8, while living with my mother and step-father. had the videos and text books. From the first "lesson", I knew it was really bad, and that everything I was learning was at least a couple of years behind what I was learning in the 4th grade at the elite private school I had previously attended. I also knew that almost everything I was being told was wrong. It was extremely frustrating. I would ask my mom to please pick another curriculum or send me to a real school again. She said I was too worldly and that learning about God is what really matters. She also used to say how great it would be if i went to PCC. Anyway, i started to go to the library (at least that was allowed) and check out text books, basically educating myself because I was so bored with the A Beka materials and videos. While I was in the 8th grade, I decided to move back in with my grandparents so I could go to a real school. Fortunately, since I studied so much on my own, I was able to get into another elite private school for high school. My sister, however, stayed with our mom and her dad, and while she did end up going to public school for high school, she really struggled and barely graduated. A Beka materials are just about the worst of the worst when it comes to fundie homeschooling materials. But hilariously, my mom still talks about how great they were since I ended up going to such a great high school.

[loveandwar]

DON'T get me started. A Beka is the reason I struggled so much with math when I transferred to public school.

[persuas1ve]

DON'T get me started. A Beka is the reason I struggled so much with math when I transferred to public school.

This past year we began seriously looking at alternatives to my son's public school--he has ADHD & several other issues--and so we made the rounds of private schools and homeschool conferences. At the Christian school we visited (A Beka all the way) we were APALLED by the math curriculum! 3rd graders given nothing but worksheets to teach them! My mother--a 35 year elementary teaching veteran--was with us and had to hold herself back when we talked to the third grade teacher. They were using ineffective, outdated methods. There was no way we could send our hands-on learner into a system like that.

[Miggy]

Please excuse my ignorance but what is PCC?

[salex]

Yikes! The local Christian private school in our county teaches exclusively from A Beka...good to know people are paying 6k a child for this...

One of the in-laws is a principal of a school that uses this curriculum. Our state has many who want to start using state education funding to fund these schools. The thought makes me twitch.

[NotALoserLikeYou]

Please excuse my ignorance but what is PCC?

Pensacola Christian College

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensacol ... an_College

[quinoa mama]

At one point before I realizedI could not afford it I was looking at private schools for my kids. A lot, maybe even most of them listed their use of Abeka curriculum as a point of pride.

[Miggy]

Pensacola Christian College

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensacol ... an_College

Thankyou. (That made for an interesting evenings reading.)

[salsa]

Thankyou. (That made for an interesting evenings reading.)

sorry to continue the derailment, but I gave it a quick perusal and I found this under "student life" -

Most stairwells and elevators on campus are segregated by gender.

:o holy shit.

[DarkAnts]

sorry to continue the derailment, but I gave it a quick perusal and I found this under "student life" -

:o holy shit.

Students of opposite gender are not allowed to meet off campus. The girls go to one beach, and the boys go to another. A group of students got suspended after they both happened to show up at the same fast food restaurant after a day at the beach. We have talked about them in the past so please feel free to do a search for them in the handy new search bar.

[nolongerIFBx]

I was "educated" with A Beka from grades 5 through 8, while living with my mother and step-father. had the videos and text books. From the first "lesson", I knew it was really bad, and that everything I was learning was at least a couple of years behind what I was learning in the 4th grade at the elite private school I had previously attended. I also knew that almost everything I was being told was wrong. It was extremely frustrating. I would ask my mom to please pick another curriculum or send me to a real school again. She said I was too worldly and that learning about God is what really matters. She also used to say how great it would be if i went to PCC. Anyway, i started to go to the library (at least that was allowed) and check out text books, basically educating myself because I was so bored with the A Beka materials and videos. While I was in the 8th grade, I decided to move back in with my grandparents so I could go to a real school. Fortunately, since I studied so much on my own, I was able to get into another elite private school for high school. My sister, however, stayed with our mom and her dad, and while she did end up going to public school for high school, she really struggled and barely graduated. A Beka materials are just about the worst of the worst when it comes to fundie homeschooling materials. But hilariously, my mom still talks about how great they were since I ended up going to such a great high school.

All I can say is my three siblings and I all graduated from A Beka Correspondence School and have 4 bachelors degrees from secular university/colleges between us, one still to be completed (hey, I'm working two jobs; it's taking me a while), a masters begun and one to be started. We especially appreciated all the writing that we had to do because so many of our peers had not learned to write though educated in public schools.

[loveandwar]

This past year we began seriously looking at alternatives to my son's public school--he has ADHD & several other issues--and so we made the rounds of private schools and homeschool conferences. At the Christian school we visited (A Beka all the way) we were APALLED by the math curriculum! 3rd graders given nothing but worksheets to teach them! My mother--a 35 year elementary teaching veteran--was with us and had to hold herself back when we talked to the third grade teacher. They were using ineffective, outdated methods. There was no way we could send our hands-on learner into a system like that.

Yep, lots of worksheets. I went to 2 different private schools K-7th grade, and they used a mixture of Christian and secular curriculum in every subject BUT math. For some reason, A Beka was THE thing to use for math. I somehow managed to get A's and B's, even though I had no idea what was going on (don't get me started on my 7th grade math teacher, the man could not teach). Of course, the public school I transferred to saw A's and B's on my records and put me in honors math! You can imagine how that turned out... :? I was very lucky to get a great teacher who had seen private school transfers with math issues before, so I did just fine after the first semester, but I still had a boatload of problems in math through high school.

Long story short: don't send your kids anywhere that uses A Beka for math!

[Lala]

I grew up going to a Christian school, attending a IFB church, and spent a year at BJU. All I've ever learned about science was in a BJU curriculum. Now that I've broken free and have kids that attend a public school, I have realized that my education regarding science is absolutely pitiful. I know nothing about the evolutionary process nor the phases of earth history. I was always taught that the earth is 6000 yrs old and was created in 6 days. I feel very cheated and if I were to go back to school and take any type of science class, I would have major caching up to do. It makes me really sad and really angry.