Episode 4: This curriculum isn’t secular (and here’s how you can tell)
In this episode, we focus on the challenges we, as secular homeschoolers, face in identifying truly secular curriculum amidst a market that often blurs the lines between secular and non-secular content. We discuss the difficulties in distinguishing genuinely secular educational materials, particularly in the science field, due to some publishers and curriculums subtly indoctrinating children with non-secular ideologies. Our conversation highlights the importance of recognizing evolution as a key criterion for secular science curriculum, the necessity of being vigilant against disguised non-secular content, and the broader implications on the credibility and effectiveness of homeschooling education. Specifically, we delve into critiquing the 'Focus on Science' curriculum by Rebecca Keller for misleadingly presenting non-secular content as secular. We emphasize the need for caution, inquiry, and disclosure of non-secular curriculums. By sharing our personal experiences and insights, we aim to empower fellow secular homeschoolers with the knowledge and strategies to critically assess and choose genuinely secular curriculums, ensuring a robust and effective education for our children.
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Transcript: Episode
We use an automatic transcription app for our podcast, which makes it possible for us to include transcripts for our podcast episodes — but it does sometimes make weird errors! We do edit it, but I’m sure we miss things sometimes.
Amy: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Secular Homeschooling with Blair and Amy, brought to you by SEA Homeschoolers and Home/school/life. We’re here recording on February 3rd, 2024. And today we are introducing a new kind of what we hope will become a regular feature of our Secular Homeschooling podcast, which we’re calling Why This Curriculum Isn’t Secular.
Blair: In these episodes, Amy and I will go back and forth choosing the curriculum that we look at each month. If you already are familiar and comfortable vetting material, it might not be obvious to you why Amy and I would decide to have a series like this. I cannot tell you how often in the SEA Homeschooler community people argue about curriculum, about whether a curriculum is secular or [00:01:00] non secular.
Part of that is because a lot of non-secular publishers, you’ve got to realize, especially like in science and history, these people are trying to indoctrinate children into a certain way of thinking. And so the more children they can indoctrinate, the better. And they would love to have you use a curriculum that subtly indoctrinates your child.
And so they can be — they aren’t always honest about it, Amy?
Amy: And even more insidious than that, I think that there are curriculum publishers in the homeschool world who completely discount the existence of secular homeschoolers. They don’t even care enough that we exist to position their products appropriately.
They assume that because we’re homeschoolers, we are religious homeschoolers who want to indoctrinate our children. That [00:02:00] really annoys me. It’s funny because Blair and I take turns being very indignant about different pieces of this fake, secular or not, full disclosure curriculum.
So this is a topic that we both in in different ways, but in very strong ways, feel really passionately about.
Blair: So when I first started homeschooling, it was a little town up in actually northern Nevada, but really close to the border with California. And we quickly were homeschooling in California, but up in a pretty up in a more red area.
And when I would meet new homeschoolers, I would say, hi, I’m Blair Lee, and I write about evolution. I used to be like, let’s just get rid of anybody that would be offended by how I homeschool. They’re not going to be a good fit for us. But I probably get less of this than you because they do know who I am.
They know who I am because I wrote the first middle school [00:03:00] biology course for the homeschool community that had evolution as, hey, it happens, in it. Yeah. And when I wrote Climate Change, the gloves were off when it came to me and the non secular community.
Amy: It’s been a few years ago, but you wrote an article for home/school/life about how to vet secular science curriculum. And I think number one on the list was, like, if it doesn’t mention evolution, it is not secular. I do think that’s a good rule of thumb, but I think because people aren’t up front about whether their curriculum is secular.
And because people don’t always know what to look for — it’s not that we’re stupid, it’s not that we’re uninformed, it’s not that we don’t care about buying secular curriculum, it’s just that we did not realize that we were going to have to become curriculum experts and know what to look for in every single curriculum to make sure that [00:04:00] it was secular.
That’s like an extra job that as homeschool moms we may not have expected that we were going to have. And so I think this is something that Blair and I have spent enough time on that we can walk you through some of the ways to tell that a curriculum isn’t secular, and then also ways that when you’re out shopping for curriculum in the real world looking for resources for your kids, you can feel confident that you’re making the choices that you want to make for your secular homeschool.
Blair: Now, I’m going to tell you that any curriculum that is mentioned in, SEA Homeschoolers — occasionally a few things slip in, so report it if you see it. Things don’t slip through on our website, but in our Facebook group, things slip through. Ask!
Amy: Don’t be embarrassed to ask. Do not be embarrassed.
People are not up front. Sometimes they are trying to trick you. And it’s not always really obvious. Do not be embarrassed to ask, ever. [00:05:00]
Blair: But I am going to ask a favor of you. Do not argue with the SEA admin about you being right. Everything that we state is non-secular, or not meeting the SEA homeschooler standard for secular academic — we have screenshots of the material. We have people who have written into us to say, I came across this in the material. If you like something, if you want to use it, great. If it’s not secular, there are almost every other homeschool group on Facebook. You can talk about it.
Amy: Yes, SEA has, they keep a pin post at the top of the main homeschool discussion group where you can see which materials aren’t secular and why, they’re really detailed explanations as to why. Facebook has been weird the last couple of years, [00:06:00] where like those pinned posts aren’t where they’re easy to find.
But it is there at the top of the page, and if you ask the SEA admin, instead of saying, Oh no, this is totally secular, instead of saying that, say, Hey, could you link me to the pinned post so I can see? They will totally do it, and they are very nice about it, and they are happy to do it, because they did the work of making the pinned post already.
Blair: It’s in the process right now, as of February 3rd, of getting an update. I hear there’s been some new materials added to the preschool kindergarten area.
Amy: Oh, and we should say, that just because a curriculum is secular, doesn’t mean it’s a perfect curriculum. A secular curriculum is not necessarily always going to be intersectional and not always going to include what people might feel is the most accurate representation of marginalized groups.
I know a lot of secular curriculum basically leaves out all of Indigenous history. I know a lot of [00:07:00] secular curriculum doesn’t really touch on LGBTQ+ history. And it doesn’t mean that it’s not secular, it just means that it still has work to do to be inclusive. So when we talk about secular, we are literally talking about what curriculum is secular academic curriculum.
It doesn’t mean that it’s going to be perfect and it doesn’t mean that just because the curriculum is secular it’s going to hit every single one of your curriculum needs.
Blair: We have really broadened the definition. Climate change was the thing that really forced us to broaden our definition. Things that misrepresent something like climate change, we consider not to be evidence based. And the 3 percent of the scientists that don’t believe in climate change because the fossil fuel industry pays them big bucks to state that is not considered scientifically relevant.[00:08:00]
And a curriculum might not have the faith based at all, and there might, there might be issues with it. And so we’re really going to discuss those. So let’s get into our first choice.
Amy: Blair actually picked the first one because it was my scandalous idea. And so Blair was brave and picked the first one, and we picked one that, that I think it’s fair to say it’s clearly not secular.
Blair: I actually know for a fact that it’s not secular. Because —
Amy: You you were at a conference, right? So the curriculum that we picked is by Rebecca Keller. And it’s, oh wait, they changed the name recently, Blair.
Blair: It’s three changes to the name. Every time the secular community gets really clued in, she changes the name of her curriculum.
Amy: So what is it called right now?
Blair: Focus on Science.
Amy: [00:09:00] Focus on Science by Rebecca Keller. And you were actually at a conference where Rebecca Keller was speaking and you heard her speak.
Blair: Yeah. Yeah, so I was at a homeschool conference many years ago.
It was the second homeschool conference I’d ever been at. Chemistry had come out a year before so I was there with Pandia Press. And Kate Johnson was there. And I said, you know what, I think I want to go listen to a couple of science talks, just to see how other people are talking about their science curriculum.
This is in California, and in California, we’re not as friendly about people who are trying to sneak intelligent design curriculum, as some more religious parts of the country. So finally Keller said yes, all of my materials are written from the [00:10:00] perspective of intelligent design, then she spent about 2 minutes on why that did not affect the scientific value of her curriculum. And then she went on with her talk. I couldn’t believe it because I had already realized that she that it was intelligent design, but it was a battle anytime you would bring that up in the homeschool community.
Amy: Anyway, will you explain what intelligent design is, just in case.
We all know the phrase, but specifically, when we talk about someone who’s doing science from the perspective of intelligent design.
Intelligent design is a type of creationism.
Blair: Basically, intelligent design means evolution did happen, but it was designed to happen the way it is. And when you get into environmental science, there’s all sorts of issues because an intelligent design person believes everything’s part of a god’s [00:11:00] plan. So if the level of carbon dioxide is increasing, and it’s human caused. God knew that this was going to happen and so you don’t need to worry. You’re going to be fine. It’s a mess when you try to incorporate intelligent design into any sort of environmental solutions because none of this is a problem. We don’t need to solve anything.
Amy: Because philosophically. You can absolutely 100 percent believe that — I always say like some magical sky daddy.
Blair: You can believe in anything spiritual that you want.
Amy: Yes, but specifically you can believe that some magical all knowing consciousness created the world and everything in it with a specific purpose in mind. There’s nothing in any kind of secular science that says if you want to believe that, you can’t.
I personally have my beliefs about the world and the meaning of life. And I’m sure that you do [00:12:00] too. But when we talk about intelligent design, we’re saying exactly what Blair said. This is exactly the problem. We’re saying that this consciousness designed everything that it created everything and it takes away what is the answer to the question? The scientific question? Why? It’s because big consciousness did it, right? And that’s not really how science works, because even if you believe that big consciousness did it, understanding how the world works isn’t important. You don’t have to understand why. To dig into the scientific how.
You get to, you can pick your why, but science is a how process. I think, right? Does that make sense?
Blair: Yeah. Keller really takes it to the extreme, though, and in fact the school district in New Mexico, where she lives, picked it up as their curriculum, and somebody sued the Board [00:13:00] of Education, saying that it was in violation of the separation of church and state, And her materials legally cannot be used in New Mexico.
This is why we chose her. Right now I am editing an earth and environmental science book course. I wrote several years back. I’m updating some of the numbers. For example, I’ve been googling things like what is the concentration of carbon dioxide in 2023 and how much have the oceans warmed. I want to make sure I’ve got those numbers correct. So anyway, Google picked up on the fact that I’ve been searching earth science questions. Everywhere I went, I’d see ads from Amazon for focus on science. And I went, seriously? So I had 15 minutes to burn one day and I became curious about, what she was writing now. So I went over to Amazon and looked at the course, just at the [00:14:00] sample. First of all, it’s a terrible sample because you don’t see any of the science activities.
What it’s got is, it’s got the introduction. And I was, I actually find this really sad, horrifying, and dismaying, because I’m going to assume that because Google thinks that this is, and Amazon think that this is a course worth advertising, I’m going to assume that a lot of people are buying it. And this course, just the intro, has so many problems.
One of the things that I was really surprised about was she’s a lot less secular than she used to be. And that to me is really sad because this is beyond intelligent design, really. But it actually does a really great job of just showing how these non secular authors use language as a form of indoctrinating and putting ideas in kids heads that [00:15:00] sound reasonable, but aren’t, that really fail logically.
It’s interesting to look at definitions that Keller’s using that seem to make sense is it actually not be a terrible exercise for a high school student to be given to just read the sample that’s available to be asked how using critical thinking where the logic fails.
Amy and I decided to start here, so that when we get to curriculum, that might not be as obvious how people are using language to obfuscate. Do you have anything to add to that, Amy?
Amy: I’ll say, I think sometimes it is really easy to think that it doesn’t really matter, especially when your kids are little, but it’s not a big deal to not use secular science curriculum. If you have fun, hands on projects and like creative explanations and the pictures are [00:16:00] pretty, what is the harm? Because you are going to double down and do the real science later. But I was thinking when we were, when I was getting ready to talk about this, I was thinking about how when I was in college, and I was studying physics. I realized that the way that I talked about science was from the perspective of intelligent design. I actually believed in real science and I had gone to a good school and I had done like good scientific work and I was majoring in physics. So it’s not like science was something I didn’t know about, but.
The language that I had heard when I was a little kid about science had shaped the way that I talked about science for the rest of my life, and I really had to unlearn a lot of things. I said, for instance, that, like, matter was created. I just automatically said that. And I think that it’s really easy to forget that maybe even more of an in later stages where kids have grown as critical thinkers and are better able to consciously [00:17:00] evaluate the information that they’re given.
What we tell our little kids stays with them. And if it is from the perspective of intelligent design, it often shapes their understanding of the world in ways that we, and they, may not realize.
Blair: The other thing to realize, and it’s another reason that Amy and I decided to start with science is that it’s easier to see the examples through science. The same thing is actually quite actively happening in the humanities. Just look at the textbooks that are being rewritten. Why? The reason, the purpose, it’s really an indoctrination. And personally, I don’t want some stranger who’s not even honest — and so why would you want your child indoctrinated by something that’s not [00:18:00] honest?
That’s my issue with it being in curriculum. It’s not that I’m anti-religious but you know what, when it comes to faith, go to church, go somewhere where they’re being very honest about the philosophical doctrine and the defining tenets behind the doctrine.
Amy: I think that in the secular homeschooling world, I know a lot of people of faith who are scrupulous about using secular resources because they believe exactly what you’re saying. That we have the ability to share our values and our beliefs with our kids, but we have a responsibility to share evidence based facts with our kids when we’re teaching them.
When we take on the responsibility of homeschooling our kids, we take on that responsibility of teaching them the facts, of teaching them honest science and honest history and honest [00:19:00] literature. And I think a lot of the sort of contemporary pushback that we see from homeschoolers who are really, people who graduated from homeschool who are really unhappy with the way that this turned out for them. Those are mostly religious homeschoolers whose educations were about indoctrination more than education.
Blair: Just really shoddy.
Amy: It’s so unfair. And it honestly gives all homeschoolers a bad name. I think that if you’re a secular homeschooler, your job is to take that responsibility, that education responsibility really seriously. And if anything, I think that we have the responsibility to like over secularize things like science and history.
Because we really do wanna make sure that we’re doing a good job and giving our kids the information that they need to be able to think for themselves.
Blair: So over secularize sounds like an extreme [00:20:00] position, but I just want to point out that what Amy’s saying is, all she’s really talking about is just making sure that when you teach your kids science, it’s science. When you teach your kids history, it’s adequate and accurate for all the peoples or as many whose stories are available for the history that you’re teaching.
In language arts and grammar, if every sentence that you’re writing is about how the United States of America is great, or how children should obey their parents, maybe reflect on the, how can you add more intellectual diversity to your curriculum?
If your math curriculum asks how many fish Jesus gave, or something like that, I always say if they used the name Mohammed instead, and you didn’t think it was secular, it’s not secular, Jesus in it [00:21:00] either.
Yeah, if you can switch out the word Bible and put in Quran and it doesn’t feel secular to you anymore. It wasn’t secular when they use Bible.
Amy: Okay, so Rebecca Keller, Focus on Science, intelligent design. A lack of evidence based data, is that a fair?
Blair: I encourage all of you, you go over to Amazon, and all you have to do is, it’s Focus on Middle School Geology by Rebecca Keller.
You can just click on the sample. What we’re going to talk about comes from this sample. This is really how it all started. I, oh, yeah, it was a Saturday, which is when we record these, that I had, that’s when I had 15 minutes, and I didn’t want to do it.
Amy: Yeah, you were like, Amy, you have to look at this.
You’re going to be so mad.
Blair: It’s okay in the beginning. The [00:22:00] only thing I picked up in the beginning is at the end of the first paragraph, it said, And as far as we know, there is no one living on any other planet.
Now, if I didn’t know that this person was not secular, I probably wouldn’t pick up that phrase. Because a lot of Christians are very earth centric with their philosophy. The other thing is most scientists who weighed in on that, and by most all secular scientists would tell you that statistically, the likelihood that there’s life on other planets, including life in this solar system, is higher than you would think.
Amy: I have it in front of me, but did she say there’s no one, no person living on other planets? What is that sentence?
Blair: There’s no one living on any other planet, but no one — it really seems people centric. Then we go to the next page and Keller, at the end of the first page of this [00:23:00] sample, the field of geology is divided into two broad categories, physical geology and historical geology.
I did some research as to whether that would be accurate, because I would broaden it a little, but, eh, okay. Physical Geology, she does an okay job of explaining, but that’s not a surprise. That’s where she’s going to really focus. Because the Intelligent Design Creationists will use Chemistry and Physics to try to prove that evolution didn’t happen, but she’s not going to spend a lot of time there in an Earth Science course.
That would be a really weird
Amy: Especially in middle school earth science course. Yeah.
Blair: Now, historical geology, I’m going to read this definition to you and I did also do some research and this is where things start to get a little muddy. Historical geology examines the origin of earth and incorporates biology, chemistry, and physics in an attempt to create a chronological [00:24:00] narrative or story about how the Earth came into being and how it changed over time.
By the way, just from what I could look at in this course, I think that Keller stepped away from any discussion that would be offensive to young Earth creationists. Now, what’s interesting, and I wish I hadn’t have interrupted myself there, is historical geology includes the evolution of life over time using fossils, rocks, and other evidence that supports an evolutionary history for the organisms on Earth.
Amy: Yes, this is you saying that though, not her.
Blair: No, that, that was left out of it. And I did a lot of research to make sure my understanding that the evolution of life over time would be included in a discussion of historical geology and [00:25:00] Keller left it out. So if you’re not a scientist, you might not pick up on the fact that is going to get left out of this.
When she says a chronological narrative of the story, you might think, but Blair, isn’t she going to include it in there? No. Because she doesn’t use the word evolution at all. Does not believe actually in evolution.
Amy: Wait, this is a, I just want to be clear, this is a geology curriculum.
Blair: Yeah. It doesn’t talk about evolution.
And the reason you would include that would be that the evidence that comes from geology, fossils, rocks, dating and other relevant information. Yeah, that is not included in it. The other reason to include a discussion of biology and geology is the changes that have happened over time on earth. Creationists don’t like to have discussions of [00:26:00] the environmental impact of humans on earth, but humans have had a dramatic impact on geology as there are more humans. That’s just going to speed up. When you take out just the organisms’ impact and the impact on organisms, it fits better with everything has been already been proscribed by an intelligent designer. Okay, but all of this is small potatoes. We wouldn’t even have thought of these episodes if that were where it stopped.
So then it gets into interpreting geological data. Science has two parts. One part is collecting scientific data through observation and experimentation. Fine. The second part is to find out what the data mean, and this is called interpretation. Interpreting scientific data is the process that scientists [00:27:00] use to draw conclusions, formulate theories, and develop scientific laws and principles.
Amy: I’m not seeing any red flags so far.
Blair: Okay, because science is a human endeavor, the interpretations of scientific data are subject to human bias and presupposition. In science, a presupposition is an assumption about how something works, and is usually based on pre existing beliefs, and sometimes on previous experience.
They are minimizing how data is used by scientists.
Amy: It’s a real issue because scientists. are always open to the possibility that they are wrong. That is the great thing about science. But the fact that scientists aren’t always claiming to have the right answer doesn’t mean that there are not clearly better answers and [00:28:00] not good answers.
Like you can interpret the data badly, just because you can’t say this is absolutely the right way to interpret this new batch of data, doesn’t mean that you can’t say this is the best way to interpret this new batch of data with the information we have now.
Blair: So the interpreting scientific data is the process that scientists use to draw conclusions, formulate theories, and then develop scientific laws and principles.
Cool. Then Keller tries to undermine how scientists arrive at their conclusions. Because science is a human endeavor, the interpretations of scientific data are subject to human bias and presupposition. In science, a presupposition is an assumption about how something works and is usually based on pre-existing beliefs and sometimes on previous experience.
So a scientist would call the presupposition a hypothesis, but she doesn’t use hypothesis because scientists don’t [00:29:00] use hypothesis to form their conclusion without doing an experiment. Where they collect results, data, and make observations about those.
Amy: It’s evil genius, because she’s saying that your beliefs are the same thing as evidence. Those two things have the same weight.
Blair: Well, your hardcore Creationists do. They believe their beliefs are facts. Right? And she’s decided to dedicate her life to indoctrinating children to her belief system.
So this is the example she gives, for example, because it is known that planes can fly, if a plane is seen in the hangar, the assumption may be that this plane will fly, even if this particular plane has not been seen in the air. See, it’s a hypothesis, but [00:30:00] she is calling into question scientists and scientific information. No scientist would say, I’m positive that plane can fly, even though I haven’t seen it fly, just because the other planes can fly. It undermines the way that scientific laws from principles and theories are developed and arrived at.
Amy: Yeah, I’m very concerned hearing this. I’m, I, wow. I’m trying to think. I guess you might identify that something was like a plane. If you had to say what is this thing in this hangar that looks like a plane? You might say it’s a plane, but that’s all you could really reasonably extrapolate about it from observation.
Blair: So I just want to point out, she’s making the case, so now I’m at her third page. It gets better. Okay, because she really, she does really —
Amy: Do you mean better or do you mean worse? [00:31:00]
Blair: It gets worse. On the very first sentence after the plane example, it is not incorrect for presuppositions to be used in science , and scientists do use them all the time.
Okay. So the way Keller defines presuppositions as “let’s skip the experiment, getting results, collecting data, and then making conclusions based on those results.” it would be incorrect if you make a hypothesis, you didn’t do any of the work, before using your hypothesis to form your conclusion, right? So she’s muddying this.
However, scientists may begin research with differing presuppositions. Okay. And even though scientists use logic and strive to be objective, there is often disagreement about how scientific data should be [00:32:00] interpreted. This is overstatement of either people who are faith-ist or work for the fossil fuel industry that sort of thing. Disagreements in science are a vital part of scientific investigation and should be encouraged because they can lead to new ideas and new ways of thinking about observations.
Okay. However, many people, including scientists, are uncomfortable with arguing. I’m just going to tell you, that’s a pretty strange sentence. Has she met a scientist? But what’s really they probably argue with her all the time. The number of arguments that people had with her, she probably felt the person who was in the, who heckled her in the conference was, that probably felt pretty argumentative, it did to me .
[00:33:00] Okay. However, many people, including scientists, are uncomfortable with arguing. Many scientists see the world in a certain way, and since they are not open to other points of view, they insist that every other scientist see the world in the same way. That is passive aggressive. That is pretty argumentative, actually. It’s projection. It’s also really inappropriate in the middle of the introduction of a text that is written to 11 year olds.
Amy: And it’s projection, because I don’t hear any science. I have never heard a scientist say, your intelligence design idea is stupid. I have heard lots of scientists say what is your evidence? I would love to see your data on this. What evidence do you have? Because science is about evidence.
Blair: Let me read the next part [00:34:00] because I want to broaden this. That is followed by the way someone sees the world is called their world view. Someone’s world view is made up of the philosophies and beliefs that they use to understand the world around them. Okay, I agree, don’t you? We’re, I would, I’ll take, I do, but this is no, hold on, I’m, I know,, but let’s take that as, yes, I agree. A good working definition for worldview. There are as many different world views as there are people, because no two people see the world in exactly the same way. This difference between world views causes many arguments in the scientific community. I’m just gonna stand up and say, no, it doesn’t. I have known a lot of scientists, know a lot of scientists.
Amy and I both have degrees in science. No, people in science don’t argue a lot about world views. And in science, you have atheists, you [00:35:00] have people who are not atheists, people don’t spend their time arguing about this. Now I could see why people might argue with someone who wrote an intelligent design curriculum and pretended it was secular.
Geologists with different world views disagree about how the earth came into being, how old it is, and how it has changed over time. That’s just not true.
This is accompanied with a picture that has two people. The person on the left says, I think the earth is old. The person on the right says, no, it’s not old. It’s young. So first of all, I want you to think about this. The first person says, I think. The next person does not, they make a statement. No, it isn’t.
Amy: Obviously the huge problem there is that [00:36:00] the age of the Earth is something that we have a lot of data about. No reasonable, I want to say person, but scientists, no reasonable scientist would say, I think the earth is old, because a reasonable scientist would say the earth is old, and here is about how old it is. We actually have really good data for that.
Blair: And how earth came into being? The accretionary theory that explains how the planets formed, there is so much data. The favorite scientist, Newton, who for some reason creationists love, a lot of Newton’s data is used to determine how the planets formed.
Amy: Yeah, you can disagree about interpretation of the facts, but you cannot disagree about the facts. That is not a scientific disagreement.
Blair: You nailed it. It’s a disagreement about the interpretation of the facts.
Amy: [00:37:00] Yeah, I think absolutely. You can disagree about the interpretation of facts, but what we have here is people disagreeing about actual facts for secular science. You can’t do that. They’re established facts. You can’t disagree with the facts and be a secular scientist.
Blair: This isn’t a bad lesson in critical thinking because Keller, has worked to make it look like there’s a lot of arguing. It can go either way. You probably have already been learning certain things, but those are the scientists who don’t like to argue. But insist that there’s only one interpretation, and because they don’t like to argue, they’ve all just adopted it.
Amy: I think that we should say, Blair and I are making fun of this because it is hilarious, and we have both read it through a few times and gotten a huge kick out of it. And this is something that we both are really, I don’t want to say sensitive, but this is something that we notice [00:38:00] when we read.
What’s insidious about these non secular science books is that if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you might not notice a lot of it. You might think, oh yeah it is true that people interpret things different ways. And it is, I do want my kids to be able to have their opinion and listen to other people’s opinions and that is a great value to have for your family, but that’s not science.
Blair: No, they do things like, when studying about climate change, there was one year that the numbers dropped slightly. They’ll go and they’ll ignore all the data on either side and blow it up over a really brief period of time. Then they’ll use that as their graphs, and it looks like, we haven’t been experiencing a steady uptick in the concentration of carbon dioxide, and methane.
Amy: Don’t be afraid not to know, don’t be embarrassed you got tricked or that you’re not [00:39:00] sure, come and ask about it. I often say that this is one of the things that I’m the most thankful for about homeschooling in the 21st century is that I can go to the SEA message boards and I can say, Hey, has anybody used this curriculum, and people will answer and they will have lots of opinions and ideas and they will have information.
And it is so great because I always say this, I’m very old now, but I always say this, I lived in a world before that, right? I homeschooled in a world before that existed. And it’s so much better with it existing.
Blair: You and I have both, I think in a previous episode, admitted that we both bought non secular curriculum without realizing it. I held on to it for a few years, because I can be really cheap around stuff like that, and I was like, I’m never gonna, I can’t resell this stuff.
Amy: No, who are you going to sell it to? That’s terrible that’s like worse than buying it yourself, is keeping spreading it [00:40:00] out there in the world.
Blair: One of the things that is really scary to me when people start talking about this sort of reinterpretation, I think it really leads to this whole conspiracy theory culture that we have right now. When you look at the number of people who believe some of these conspiracy theories, it’s nuts. And things like this of Keller’s, where she does this whole reinterpretation, redefining, but in very subtle ways, and then kids learn it. I think that it makes your kids more open to believing in conspiracy theories because they’ve been taught that you just can’t trust everything you’re learning. And so I think that is a really good reason not to try to secularize non-secular materials.
Amy: It’s [00:41:00] It’s sometimes really sneaky — this one, I think, is, it’s very clear that she is not a secular — I feel like that feels like an oxymoron — not a secular scientist. It doesn’t feel like that should work.
I know that Blair and I are going through it and maybe like doing a little trash talking because it is upsetting to see this being marketed at people without any indicators that this is not a secular, this is not a scientific curriculum, but we are also going to look as the months go on, we’re going to look at some curriculum where the lack of secularness — I feel like that’s awkwardly phrased — but where the lack of secularness is not as obvious, where it’s even more subtle, and it makes it even harder to spot. So we’ll look at history and science and other curriculum materials that, it turns out this curriculum isn’t secular, and we hope that by giving you the tools [00:42:00] that we use to interrogate curriculum will make it easier for you to do that, for you to, whatever curriculum you’re using, recognize things that might be problems in your homeschool.
Blair: So I guess that’s a wrap, isn’t it, Amy?
Amy: Yeah, do you, are you reading anything great that you want to share about?
Blair: I loved Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and I needed a book the other day. The number of times Amazon and Barnes Noble have recommended Piranesi to me. I was like, meh, I’m about to start Piranesi and, also I can’t believe, cause I love books that are focused on the plague, I had never read Hamnet.
Amy: You are in, you are in for a double treat. Those are two absolutely delightful books.
Blair: What are you reading, Amy?
Amy: You are going to be jealous because I am teaching the Harlem Renaissance right now this semester. So I am reading all Harlem Renaissance writers. I’m reading [00:43:00] Zora Neale Hurston, Barracoon, and I’m reading Langston Hughes poetry collection, The Weary Blues, and I’m reading Passing by Nella Larsen.
