Slow news day? "Some homeschooling parents choose religious texts"

Top Home-School Texts Dismiss Darwin, Evolution, 6 March 2010, Fox News

"The majority of home-schoolers self-identify as evangelical Christians," said Ian Slatter, a spokesman for the Home School Legal Defense Association. "Most home-schoolers will definitely have a sort of creationist component to their home-school program."

And Mr. Slatter comes by the characterization "most," how?  Given that "most" homeschooling noses remain uncounted, and that many homeschooling families may very well use trade books or other resources that are uncounted as to who is using what, the quote may just be 'ink on paper.'

According to the National Center for Education Statistics,

Parents were then asked which one of the applicable reasons they considered to be their most important reason for homeschooling ... 30 percent had parents who said the most important reason was to provide religious or moral instruction (table 4).   (emphasis added)

Thirty percent is not "most."  And of that thirty percent who credited religious or moral instruction as most important for them in homeschooling their children, it cannot be assumed that they are all evangelical Christians.  Regardless of the reasons from the parents, the number of evangelicals in the homeschooling ranks should come as no surprise given the percentage of Americans who say they are Christian.  Homeschooling parents come from the same general population as everyone else in the country so the representation of any particular group within homeschooling will probably reflect that group's overall presence in the population. 

Another factor is that not all homeschooling parents choose materials written specifically for the homeschooling market.  Many of us use trade books and magazines, or perhaps courses from providers such as The Teaching Company. Tracking individuals' purchases from Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, or from specialty catalogs and labeling them as 'homeschooling texts' is impossible.

For an organization to publish an article underscoring the creationists' "mostness" within homeschooling sounds either like someone protesting too much, or maybe trying to goose the readership on a slow news day.

The following list is a collection of homeschooling resources and advocates whose public contribution is from a generalist viewpoint.

1. Home Education Magazine  (est. 1984)
2. Growing Without Schooling  (1977 - 2001)  
3. The Drinking Gourd multi-cultural magazine/catalog (no longer published)
4. Jon's Homeschool Resources  (older website -- 'secular homeschooling' is nothing new) 
5. Learn in Freedom  (older website)
6. A to Z Home's Cool (you name it, Ann's got it)
7. Best Homeschool 
8. The Evolved Homeschooler wiki 
9. Secular Homeschooling magazine  
10. Secular Homeschoolers .net
11. Atheist Homeschool .com 
12. Homeschooling Freethinkers  
13. HUUmans on the Web  
14. Montessori Homeschooling  
15. Waldorf Homeschooling 
16. FUN Books 
17. Homeschooling for Excellence 
18. The Homeschool Reader   
19. The Teenage Liberation Handbook   
20. The Homeschooling Book of Answers 
21. A Sense of Self:  Listening to homeschooled adolescent girls 
22. Homeschool Atheists email list
23. Secular Homeschoolers email list 
24. Homeschool Military email list 
25. Donn and Jean Reed
26. Linda Dobson   
27. Larry and Susan Kaseman 
28. John Taylor Gatto 
29. Pat Farenga 
30. Nancy Wallace   
31. Ann Lahrson Fisher 
32. Sandra Dodd   
33. Rebecca Rupp 
34. Earl Stevens 
35. David Guterson 
36. Cafi Cohen   
37. Mary McCarthy 
38. Tammy Takahashi 
39. Homeschool Empowerment Webring 
40. Skylark Sings  
41. Life Without School 
42. Secular Homeschool blog
43. The Meming of Life blog post 
    
44. Homeschool Is Legal 
45. Throwing Marshmallows blog 
46. American School 
    
47. Calvert School 
    
48. Clonlara School   
    
49. Keystone High School  
50. Oak Meadow School  

If you know of an organization or resource that I've omitted from this one afternoon's worth of work, please add it in the Comments section.

Comments

[Michele]

Great list! How about adding Intellego Unit Studies? We are a secular provider of homeschool curriculum.

[Valerie]

From HomeschoolRecess.com
"Homeschooling Resources to teach evolution"
http://homeschoolrecess.com/topic/evolution

[Valerie]

Good point from Mark at Home Education Magazine:
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Culture War Bait…
Top home-school texts dismiss Darwin, evolution

The article itself is a throw-away piece which builds itself on too many assumptions to be taking seriously. The fight being picked is real, and a losing one for homeschooling.

Culture wars do us no good because homeschoolers need a broad base of support to maintain our ability to raise our kids consistent with our values and beliefs.

I’ve typed it before and will again, getting caught up in the ‘culture wars’ helps politicians and political parties, not families.
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http://www.homeedmag.com/newscomm/4436/culture-war-bait/

[Valerie]

And again, from Mark:
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While it is sad that there are homeschoolers who are too short sighted to realize how poorly this kind of responses reflects on us all, the bigger concern is these response only hardens positions. A case in point is the oinion expressed by PZ Myers, a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, writing about the emails. Prof. Myers concludes:

I’m one of those people who thinks we ought to be consistent and require everyone to attend an accredited school, public or private, and that private schools ought also to be required to meet certain secular standards, such as that their science education ought to address the evidence reasonably. You want to send your kids to a school that teaches them all about Jesus? Fine. But it doesn’t count as a legitimate education unless it also teaches the basics of science, math, history, English, etc. in a way that meets state education standards.
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<http://www.homeedmag.com/newscomm/4458/culture-war-bait-redux/>