bride of christ and Wally #fundie

bride of christ and Wally #fundie rr-bb.com

bride of christ: "I really want to homeschool my child, but there is a problem. I'm really not that smart. I barely got by in school on certain subjects. I am a hands-on learner. I feel so unqualified. My goal from the beginning was to homeschool my boy, but I am afraid that I won't have the intelligence to do so.

Maybe I just don't have enough confidence in myself, but I can definitely feel the discouraging comments from friends and family coming around the corner. They tried to discourage my breastfeeding, so this won't surprise me a bit. I am afraid there will be little support in this area. What can I say? I'm a rebel mom! [...]"

Wally: "Anyone can Homeschool.

The important things are: Drive/Conviction, Cirriculim, Support

My kids intelectual, spiritual welfare is enough motovation for me.

ABEKA, Bob Jones, Pace ...check the stickies, there is plenty of great stuff

Family may be a problem, but there are groups, and people right here ready to support.

You may need to utilize more video/dvd cirriculim (no, I cant spell) if teaching is not a strong gift of yours. But then you may learn stuff too. I forgot so much it's scary.

Go for it!"

56 comments

old comment by KatAutumn

To Wally's credit, anyone can home school. Not everyone should home school. That is the caveat. I home school my son for completely secular reasons and it's a tough job. It requires a lot of diligence and creativity. And Abeka is a great program in terms of being a challenging curriculum. The problem is that it's difficult to get a college (unless you plan on attending Pensacola Christian) to accept you after graduating through the Abeka program.

There's also a lot of red tape involved. I was home schooled ninth through twelfth grade through the Abeka program. My mom liked it because it was a video correspondence program. She realized she would not be able to teach me, at an advanced high school level, herself. The only iffy aspect is their biology program, as it does speak solely of Young Earth Creation. We also had a unit filled with anti-abortion sentiments. I ended up not obtaining my graduation certificate through Pensacola and got my GED instead.

In order to be approved for the Abeka curriculum you have to fill out some pretty ridiculous paper work. For starters, my mother had to sign an affidavit stating that my father was the spiritual and financial leader in our family and that he was 100% supportive of the decision. We also had to submit a letter of recommendation from our pastor that stated that I was saved and baptized, as well as those in my family and that my participation would be an asset to their program. Because his wife was a public school teacher, that was a real challenge.

old comment by The L

PACE actually wasn't too bad of a system. You watched the kids grow up as you progressed through the series. Hell, one of the boys and his parents are killed doing missionary work in Africa--best incentive to avoid proselytizing overseas I've seen yet.

The only downsides I can think of are the science and history "Creation Science" emphasis, and the annoying poems at the beginning of each book about different virtues. The other subjects are surprisingly well-done.

And I've used A Beka as well. Nicely accelerated compared to the ridiculously slow public-school teaching, but even if you discount the Christian dogma, it's still not without its flaws. After 4 years of A Beka setting up every single math problem for him in one-time-use texts, my brother had to be taught by the teacher how to copy down a math problem correctly so he could work it on a separate sheet of paper.

@KatAutumn: Why the baptism requirement? Are they not confident enough in the ability of the curriculum to "save" students?

old comment by Professor M

@KatAutumn --

Actually, much more of the A Beka curriculum is bullshit than just the "biology". (And that's not just an evolution-vs-creation detail which can allow for the teaching of "the rest of" biology -- without evolution, nothing makes sense in modern biology.) Their history "classes" in particular are horridly inaccurate -- practically manufactured in the case of American history, and completely divorced from even high-school standards of scholarship in terms of models of historical change.

As for the math...are they still refusing to teach set theory for doctrinal reasons?

In most states with a decent educational system, an A Beka graduate will generally need at least a year or two of community-college classes before reaching the expected level for incoming first-year college students.

old comment by The L

@Asuka: Have you ever taught a gifted child? You have to choose between homeschooling, acceleration through an ordinary school, or letting your child's mind and motivation stagnate in an educational system that's far too easy for him, because the nearest elementary school with a decent gifted program may be in a totally different state.

I was that child. I breezed through elementary and middle school with hardly any effort, skipped several grades, then my parents put me in a high school for gifted children, and my grades plummeted because I didn't know how to study, I'd never had to take good notes, and none of the classes taught effective note-taking and study methods. So I was deprived of both socialization with peers and a challenging curriculum for most of my school years--I actually might have done better if I'd been home-schooled, because I could have gone at my own pace and actually been challenged to think.

My boyfriend is gifted, and he was valedictorian in his small-town high school, making all A's with next to no effort. Then he got into college, and again, his grades plummeted because for the first time in his life, he had to study, and he'd never learned how.

Many schools are reforming their methods so that gifted children can be challenged even in a standard class, but for all too many gifted children, going to an ordinary school, public or private, is not nearly as helpful as homeschooling would be, if you weigh all the pros and cons.

old comment by Asuka

@The L - That's actually the other problem with homeschool, as a matter of fact. We're really arguing the same thing. ;)

Yes, you can get the materials you need from the state or from a group like Abeka. But your average housewife will usually be clueless when it comes to matching teaching styles and curriculum with a child's developmental level or speed. I say I'm qualified because I have the education and experience to back that up (I'm a teacher myself), but I'm well aware that I'm an exception.

Because really? Teaching is nowhere *near* as simple as it looks. What if you have a child who's LD but brilliant, for example? Are you going to know how to handle that sort of thing? Just because you know your child doesn't mean you can actually teach him.

Another reason I advocate just letting them go to an accredited school, already. It doesn't even have to be public (and if you're willing to spend the money for textbooks and teaching materials, which are FAR from cheap, you might as well send them on to a private), but chances are you'll be better prepared from both an intellectual and social level.

That's a problem with fundamentalist Christian schools, too, speaking of which: My fiance graduated fifth in his class and couldn't get into the college of his choice because the school wasn't state-accredited, even though he had an SAT score over 1400.