It's not a topic I'd intended to blog about, even though I'd read the AP article, Top home-school texts dismiss Darwin, evolution. But I wrote so much in a comment to a friend's Facebook post (thanks, Liz!), I figure it's a shame not to make a second use of the effort.
Our own homeschooling experience left me not particularly impressed with the efforts of specifically Christian publishers, beginning with the discovery that the A Beka kindergarten book I'd bought taught that winter is a time of snow, with no mention of the large part of the world where
that isn't true. I suspect most books at the kindergarten level are about
as bad, but A Beka is based in Pensacola, Florida, and should have
known better.
Nonetheless, I can't get very excited about the evolutionary shortcomings of some homeschooling textbooks. I'm more upset that mainstream publishers often won't sell to homeschoolers. Standard textbooks have plenty of problems as well, whether in science or history or literature, and the only hope of getting a reasonably clear story is to have plenty of resources, along with some training in logic. I well remember the astonishment I felt in college upon discovering that most of my (public) high school classes had lied to me. Not on purpose, perhaps, but by vast simplification they had left out most of the complexity, uncertainty, and beauty of the subjects.
Textbooks can sometimes be helpful, especially at the higher level, and most especially in subjects like math, but at best they are an introduction, or a supplement, and should be accompanied by other resources and experience as much as possible. Whatever your source of materials, if you don't include some dissenting voices, you're doing your students a disfavor. So why the fuss about these particular books?
I'm also one to cheer the underdog, because, having seen from inside how scientific publishing works, I know that Truth is pretty far down on the list when it comes to deciding what goes into the much-vaunted "peer-reviewed journals." There's a long history of established opinion being wrong, too.
But most of all, I'm in favor of the choice of what to teach and what materials to use being left up to the PARENTS and at some point the STUDENTS. If the kids grow up not knowing anything about evolution, that's bad—but in my mind no worse than if they grow up not knowing that there are serious disagreements and questions even among evolutionists, or not reading Shakespeare, or reading Judy Blume, or watching Saturday morning cartoons on television, or not learning to play the piano, or eating junk food, or a thousand other areas in which parents don't want ME making their childrearing decisions for them.
It's risky to leave the nurture and education of the next generation in the hands of their parents, but it's the safest risk we'll ever run, and necessary. If civilization is to survive, we need diversity—as every good evolutionist should agree.
