Home School Curricula: the good, the bad and the ugly

[mirele]

On the "Life in a Shoe: Homeschool regardless of your circumstances!" thread, there's mention of a "Robinson Self-Teaching Curriculum" as well as a link to a page where the creator of the curriculum expresses his dissatisfaction with multiculturalism (http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/view/rc/s31p1000.htm). I looked at the books and said to myself, "gee, this curriculum is pretty darn white, innit?"

So, which home school curricula do you all have experience with? Bob Jones? Abeka? Sonlight? Etc.? What's the good, the bad and the ugly of each?

[debrand]

My kids hated Bob Jones and Apologia. They felt that both companies shoved religion down their throats. Bob Jones has an anti Catholic bent. Apologia are science books that are fun for younger children but by the middle grades religion becomes an issue again.

We've used Saxon for math. Saxon isn't bad, but Singapore worked better for my children.

Now we use Holt, which is a secular company.

Christians who want a religious curriculum that isn't too restrictive might enjoy Sonlight. Sonlight is literature based and doesn't shy away from controversial books.

[longskirts]

Robinson does include Uncle Remus stories (African American folk tales) as well as Booker T. Washington's autobiography. The Mark Twain selections could also be used to teach about racism. I don't think it's a white supremacist curriculum or anything that nasty though it could certainly stand to be broader.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

The Friedrich family used the Robinson curriculum if I recall correctly - I think they knew him personally. Beyond that I don't know much about it.

Aside from that, I do remember years ago on USENET, there would be the occasional troll (at least I hope they were trolls, but now I wonder) coming into the homeschooling groups (or even the generic parenting groups) asking if anyone knew where they can find textbooks with only white people in them.

Of course history being what it is, if you fetishize the old pre-war or during war textbooks for WHATEVER reason (people like the grammar, people like the rural emphasis, people particularly like the gender roles) you will naturally find books with pretty much only white kids in the illustrations, all the adventuresome things done by boys, and the girls standing adoringly by, but that's a separate thing from what literature or history is explicitly included in other books.

[dcmhejbl62]

We started with Bob Jones because our neighbors said it was academically broader than Abeka, and they were homeschooling with an eye toward college. I don't think we lasted an entire week. We switched to Sonlight and used that as the basis for our very eclectic and nearly unschooling approach.

I can't say enough about Sonlight: their motto used to be something like "The way you wish you'd been taught," and as a book-lover, I'd have to agree. Since he was in middle school, I didn't do the read-alouds (which I now regret, just because I believe more in the process now, but he did fine), just added them to his reading list. He had a good 30 books to read per year, carefully selected to go with the time period we were studying in history. Sounds simple, and yet you just wouldn't believe the depth of this program. The original founders were missionaries, so the multicultural emphasis and how it relates to ancient and American history is just fabulous.

We used apologia as our science base, and the only thing I didn't like about it was the creation push, which is strong. But we'd been through an anti-creation push from public school, so I was okay supplementing (my stance is no one was there, so no one knows, and no one can tell you for sure the other side is wrong. Watch for anti-whatever propaganda, look at the evidence and make your own decision). My son liked it, and I was impressed with how much he could do independently and still learn.

We supplemented with some online coursework deals with the homeschool coop in math and science, can't remember the names but he learned algebra almost entirely from it, and when he went back to public school his math grade took a dive when they got past the things he'd learned at home, so either our online class was great or his public school math teachers were horrible. He also read something like "Life with Fred" for math... odd, quirky combination silly story, philosophy of math, and math all rolled together, not much like a textbook at all but he really took to it. It wasn't our whole math program but great as a supplement.

He did a "lapbook" unit on ancient history. Lapbooks were huge in homeschooling at the time, and while I think they are great for younger kids, they are awfully juvenile for the older ones. They really don't learn any research, organization, or writing skills because those are already done.

That was most of our "official" curricula, which is probably comprehensive enough, but we supplemented a LOT. Our state has a minimum homeschooling hours component, so we had a good 2-3 hours minimum left per day to try other subjects and interests and projects.

[pomology]

Robinson does include Uncle Remus stories (African American folk tales) as well as Booker T. Washington's autobiography. The Mark Twain selections could also be used to teach about racism. I don't think it's a white supremacist curriculum or anything that nasty though it could certainly stand to be broader.

I might be wrong here, but I thought that the Uncle Remus stories were actually written by a white man and were incredibly racist.

[bbfreethinker]

One of the main books used in the Robinson curriculum is the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, because, you know, nothing important in history or science has happened since 1911.

[longskirts]

The Uncle Remus stories were written down by a white man, but I don't think there's agreement that they are racist. For example, this is from the African American Registry (aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/joel-chandler-harris-imaginative-writer):

"In the 1880s, Harris began to publish whimsical, imaginative stories that accurately reproduced local Black folktales in authentic language. The stories centered on the character of Uncle Remus, a former slave who is the servant of a Southern family. To entertain the young son, Uncle Remus tells him stories about animals that act like humans, such as Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and Brer Bear. With these stories and other works depicting Southern life, Harris became one of the first American authors to use dialect to provide an important record of Black oral folktales in the Southeastern United States."

[lilah]

I think I might go blind rolling my eyes at the argument against multi-culturalism. What an an obnoxious SOB.

[GrapeSlushie]

I was homeschooled from 7th to 9th grade, and my mom used Alpha Omega Lifepacs (they were identical to the same company's Switched On Schoolhouse program the Duggars use, but in book form). I used Switched On Schoolhouse itself for 8th grade, but our computer couldn't handle it very well, so I went back to books the following year. They did have a religious slant, but they weren't so overly religious that they neglected to teach solid facts. The science curriculum was fairly decent as far as I remember, at least compared to what I hear about other, more strictly religious curricula.

[maybeizfundie]

Looking at the article, it doesn't seem he has a problem with actual multiculturalism (though I guess that depends on how you define the word, semantics, as always), but with a particular brand that he percieves as being popular in schools. At the end he's very clear that *racism* is wrong and that it's important children learn to look for similarities between themselves and others, rather than focusing on and separating because of differences.

My kids are genetically multicultural, so it would be bizarre to take and Ameri-centric or even Euro-centric approach to social studies and language and culture. For example, they got the standard African American history stuff in the month of February, but our major focus that month was their father's country-history, language, culture, etc.

We use the Calvert curriculum, which is one option provided by our state cyber school. It is basic and standard and secular in approach, as far as I can tell, though there are some spirituals in the music lessons. Covers everything they need to know for the tests and to advance in standard American education.

But we also do a *lot* of other stuff. Calvert lessons don't take a whole lot of time, at these ages because it's a lot of what the kids already know or are developementally ready to grasp easily. We do a lot of reading, particularly as many classics as I can find in the library. We use Khan Academy for more mathematics and some science (though most of that is above their heads at this point). Love that one because it is free, high quality, and the instruction is very engaging. A good bit of what my kids know has been learned through the more ecclectic and "unschool"y approach, not by intent, just by how things have happened. We use the cyberschool to make sure they are on track but there's no way we're going to limit them to just that.

[maybeizfundie]

And we have used lapbooks (my kids are 8 and under). I was quite happy to find the concept, because they are similar to many of the projects that I did in school, and for me were *ideal* for learning about a particular subject. The combination of reading, writing, creativity, and tactile activities was something that really helped the concepts stick. The Old Schoolhouse magazines has hordes of the things, that include research links and videos as well as hands-on projects. It definitely doesn't have to be just copying facts into a book.

[Kaylee]

I have two friends who use the Robinson curriculum and have had good results with it, and that is one of the ones I'm leaning towards myself (along with Charlotte Mason, but I'll probably use those as starting points and tweak it according to his interests and what our state requires the public school kids in his grade to know). I would think you can modify any sort of curriculum though, especially one that is literature-based, to add more multicultural authors and issues if you'd like.

(Actually, if anyone knows of any sites or blogs with recommendations for this, I'd love to see them. I know we'll be reading Sandra Cisneros, Zora Neal Hurston, Maya Angelou, and Eudora Welty, and it will be easy to use biographies along with history, but my education was pretty focused on dead white males, so I could definitely use some advice in that department).

One of the reasons I'd shy away from the majority of Christian homeschool curricula is similar to that article's arguments about multiculturalism. While I don't see school courses being "watered down" by including more multicultural elements in their classes, I do see a lot of watering-down among homeschool publishers in order to sell to people who only want to teach a conservative Christian viewpoint to their children.

[clibbyjo]

And we have used lapbooks (my kids are 8 and under). I was quite happy to find the concept, because they are similar to many of the projects that I did in school, and for me were *ideal* for learning about a particular subject. The combination of reading, writing, creativity, and tactile activities was something that really helped the concepts stick. The Old Schoolhouse magazines has hordes of the things, that include research links and videos as well as hands-on projects. It definitely doesn't have to be just copying facts into a book.

I have my kids do lapbooks for vacations and use all the flyers and pictures so they look great.(for portfolios of course :))

The only "curriculum" I buy yearly is Teaching Textbooks for math http://teachingtextbooks.com/ . I have friends who love "Life of Fred" for math and its way cheaper.

We do mostly hands on learning, so if we decide to identify the mushrooms in our yard, then that would count as "science"(my 9 year old just found morels this spring and he did this to see if they were real or false morels and if we could eat them).

This year my oldest will do a bit more because he is in 10th grade. He reads computer programming books for fun,so will take a computer class at the community college.He will continue to volunteer at the hospital which is really helping with his shyness. He will decide what he wants to do for the most part.

On the co-op front:

We are planning a French or Spanish immersion semester and if my kids do French we will take them to Quebec City next spring.(their choice)

Group" Megabus" trip to Washington D.C.

We have an engineer who will be teaching a semester of bridge building. He plans to have the kids in teams, figure out cost and materials and build real bridges to scale.

Camp -last year was Viking's, we hope to have another 4 week camp this year but more middle ages

Year long Odyssey of the Mind and a Physics club.

Possible Chemistry class as well.(still trying to get lab at community college and a professor for this)

Those are my main things we will do, so curriculum will vary. We will buy whatever we need as a group(including epensive chemisty sets) because we split the cost and everyone wins.

Nanowrimo will start in Nov. where the kids write a book in a month. My daughter loves "school work" so I will add in "Writing Strands"( a real writing curriculum) and probably "Story of the World"(history) for my youngest. I do not worry about "curriculums". My kids consistantly score in the mid-high 90's on their CAT tests so I know what we do works for them. :) All of this while continuing their sports and music lessons is plenty.

[Olivia]

Well, my experience was with being homeschooled/unschooled so my take on textbooks is probably pretty outdated.

We did Saxon math (and Physics), which I thought was good and comprehensive but grew very repetitious. If I had a kid who struggled with math, I think it could be a good curriculum because of all the practice. I'd probably lean more towards Singapore math for the younger ones and Scott Foresman later if we were to homeschool (and we might just do that as a supplement anyway... I want to send our kids to regular school, but I also want to teach them myself during the summer because... well, because my husband and i are both huge geeks who love learning and want to share that with our children!).

We did a bunch of Abeka for English, vocab and science. I loved the vocab books (usually finished the textbook before the end of September unless my mom hid it) but English was boring to me, and I usually (once we were unschooling) just ignored it in favor of writing something every day, reading voraciously, and playing word games. That left some gaps in my education, but (just as an example, sorry, I know how pretentious this sounds) I did land a perfect score on the verbal section of the SAT and did well with college writing assignments, so I don't think a lack of formal English education hurt me too terribly. Abeka science was terribly boring; we switched to Bob Jones science later, but I really didn't enjoy any of it until I started studying Physics with Saxon, a book series called "Physics Can be Fun" and Asimnov's guide to Physics (I forget the title).

Oh, and Powerglide for foreign languages, which I loved -- very fun and intuitive.

I have reasons for not wanting to homeschool, but I do get so excited about the potential for teaching kids in a very organic, fun way, and I think there's much better curriculum out there now for homeschooling than was available in the '90s.

[wildflower]

Robinson is an interesting character. He was a "real" scientist and a collaborator with Linus Pauling, a winner of both the Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The two of them had a falling out and Robinson got bit by the crazy bug and started hanging out with Gary North and worrying about the "commies." He now runs his own independently funded "research" institute.

As much as I disagree with a lot of his crazy, I actually do agree that the proper order of teaching should be Calculus>Physics>Chemistry>Biology.

[longskirts]

I can't say I like Robinson's insistence that kids barrel through all that math so they can start high-level physics in ninth grade. Maybe his kids were ready for Calculus in middle school, but most aren't and I don't think it's realistic to expect that.

[Mommy22alyns]

When we start school again, both girls will be doing My Father's World Adventures (US History, science, and Bible). We use CLE and Teaching Textbooks for math. My youngest will use CLE Language Arts too. My oldest will study grammar from Rod & Staff, spelling with Spelling Power, and typing on the computer. She's also refining her cursive handwriting and will start Latin with Latin For Children. They'll read Sonlight's 4-5 readers. We did SL last year, but I didn't like it very much.

I like the (Neo-) Classical approach to education, but I'm not following it strictly. The book that really gave me confidence to homeschool is The Well-Trained Mind.

[mirele]

I really like reading what you engaged parents are doing to teach your kids. That (and experience with 80s and 90s unschoolers) gives me hope for some homeschooled kids.

However...I also had experience with kids who were in what became "School of Tomorrow." It was a parent-run co-op that failed after two years and the kids ended up going back to the public schools. (This was circa 1980.) From the reports I heard, some kids weren't even at grade level and one was put back two grades, in other words, had made no progress. From looking at the drilled nature of the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum, I could see how that would be the case.

[DefraudedbyGothard]

I used Veritas Press for 14 years. The Kid loved their stuff, especially the Omnibus series. They come from the reformed view and we are not reformed (that's an understatement :lol: ) but the selection was excellent and they were lovely when I called. They had so many books that she wanted I always over spent my budget. I also was able to resell most of my curricula on Ebay for at least 50% recoup. She was accepted at both colleges she applied to and also attended community college her senior year.

[LIzzieB]

Homeschooling is far less common in Australia, so I don't know much about it. I do have one friend who is from a fundie-lite family who was homeschooled with her many siblings using ACE. Another friend went to a tiny school that used ACE curriculum.

What's is all about? I've looked up their website but it's a bit vague...

[demgirl]

You know what I wonder about with homeschooling, for those who have aspirations to continue on to college? Are there any resources for parents to use to help high school age children learn how to write an argument paper? This was the biggest skill I lacked when I went to college. I didn't homeschool but I did go to a non-traditional private high school and I really felt this was the major area that my school failed me. My sister, who went to public school, was much more prepared to write these types of papers. I was fine with research papers, but then I hit my first argument paper, where you not only had to lay out a thesis and conclusion, but put in supporting facts and draw conclusions and make your argument, and I struggled so badly. And the problem wasn't even so much the logical issues or making an argument -- I could do that verbally. It was learning how to set up the flow of the paper and to correctly lay out the argument so that it made sense in writing. I noticed tons of people struggled with this and I'm sure the public schools could do better, but it always seemed to me that at least the public school kids had some experience doing this before and had been through the basics. Is there any homeschool curricula that deals with this sort of skill?

[uber frau]

Homeschooling is far less common in Australia, so I don't know much about it. I do have one friend who is from a fundie-lite family who was homeschooled with her many siblings using ACE. Another friend went to a tiny school that used ACE curriculum.

What's is all about? I've looked up their website but it's a bit vague...

I'm not a HSer but I have done a fair bit of research (I have a kid who would struggle to survive in mainstream school). ACE/SOT is one of the few 'pre-packaged' curricula available here (and, bonus, it's Christian). Kids get a packet with (self-directed) worksheets for every subject and spend most of their time sitting down doing busy work. It's very boring and academically quite poor, even compared to the public system.

It used to be popular with tiny Christian schools because it's self directed and didn't require any trained teachers, but since the Fed. Government is pushing a national curriculum and most states have tightened up the rules about qualification requirements for teaching staff, it's used a lot less.

HSers who take their jobs seriously tend to take a more eclectic approach (ie, actually take the time to research and mix and match resources to suit their needs) or use School of the Air/distance-ed packages from state ed. departments.

[Brainsample]

Homeschooling is far less common in Australia, so I don't know much about it. I do have one friend who is from a fundie-lite family who was homeschooled with her many siblings using ACE. Another friend went to a tiny school that used ACE curriculum.

What's is all about? I've looked up their website but it's a bit vague...

I went to public school through 7th grade and to an ACE private Christian school, graduating in 11th grade. I plowed through the materials rather quickly, save for geometry which I typically solved a problem in 10 proofs/theorems when it called for 4 or vice versa. Chemistry took me about the regular full school year, too. I did okay on SATs and made honor roll for my first three semesters in college. I found science classes much easier in college.

Biggest setbacks: You have to be a self-motivated learner, otherwise I don't think that the system works as well. I also never heard many words spoken aloud, though you're supposed to read the vocab words to a teacher before you take the test. I was a good student, so I don't know that anyone scrutinized me this way. Needless to say, I was in my 30s before I stopped learning words that I didn't know how to pronounce correctly. (I don't take it for granted, though. I may still find a few.) For instance, I pronounced "disheveled" as "dis- heeve -elled."

If you have a slow kid, ACE works because they are not all flipped out over the competition. So long as the child does 12 Packets (PACEs) per school year, they get credit for a full year. We had one kid who was not college bound who graduated doing 8th grad work in some subjects, but he kept up and did his 12 PACEs per year for four years. Last I heard, he was a janitor and sang with a big traveling choir on the side. They also did a lot of good work with some learning disabled kids, because the better students would either help the slower ones when they finished their work, and the teacher could give special attention to the slower kids. I used to go up and proctor/monitor the 1-3rd graders all the time in high school when I'd finished my work for the day or the week.

We did have some electives like Bible, typing, speech, sign language, and music that were classroom studies. We had some moms come in to teach home ec, too.

I thought the social studies PACES were a little infantile, and I went through biology so quickly in 8th grade that I barely remembered any of it by the time I finished. I didn't know if I was going to go to college or into a hospital diploma school for nursing, so I took the nursing entrance exam for diploma schools. I scored in the 97-99th percentiles in everything but biology wherein I scored in the 60th percentile. But I got As and Bs in my science classes, though I struggled in my first biology lab because I had a lame instructor and was not sure what they wanted. I found out quickly on test day! (We'd had no labs in Christian school.)

Anyway, it worked very well for me, but I'd attended a good public school before I went there. I would not recommend their science classes, though.

What I did have a blast doing was their state and national competition program, and I won some awards for essays and music that I wrote. We sang but our school never won in voice, though my deaf friend won for organ (she could feel the vibrations of the instrument). They also had sports competitions, too, but I was an egghead.

In prep for those essays, I read a couple of the very fundie books written by Donald Howard, the guy who came up with the curriculum. It was typical Christian Reconstruction stuff, from my estimation. When I went to a smaller Constitution Party meeting in Maryland, the Colonel who ran as a running mate with Howard Phillips was in attendance, and I ended up talking with him. I said something about having read to much Donald Howard or that something he said sounded like it was straight out of a Donald Howard book, and he lit up like a Christmas tree. He said, "I know Donald Howard..." and we had a famous little chat. (That old running mate of Howard's when they were still called the Taxpayer's Party was ADORABLE and the nicest guy. Can't remember his name, though.) But that should give you an idea of the ideology. It was very Baptist and uptight regarding gender, as I recall, but otherwise not very obnoxious.

[maybeizfundie]

Is there any homeschool curricula that deals with this sort of skill?

*********************

Re the argument papers: This was standard in all the forms of schooling I participated in, public, private, and my last year homeschooling, at least since middle school. Don't know about all the curricula, but I would think it would be rather hard to avoid, actually. Though I'm sure the quality of teaching depends on the school or the parents.