Episode 7: How can you tell if your homeschool science curriculum is really secular?
We dive into the challenging world of secular science in homeschooling, discovering how tricky it can be to navigate through seemingly neutral curriculums that are anything but. Our conversation takes us through the pitfalls of evangelical curriculums, the importance of critical thinking, and how to vet for truly secular science resources. Join us as we unpack the layers, share our personal experiences, and offer tips to secure a secular science education for your kids, ensuring they're not indoctrinated but enlightened.
We love to hear from you! Please email us with questions, comments, and ideas for future episodes!
Transcript: Episode 7
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.
[00:00:00] Amy: Hello and welcome to Secular Homeschooling with Blair and Amy brought to you by SEA Homeschoolers and home.school.life. Today I’m so excited because we’re talking about one of the things that I think maybe most new homeschoolers, when you start homeschooling, ask the most, which is how can you tell that your science curriculum is secular?
And I’m so lucky to have Blair talking about this with me today because Blair is the secular science expert in the secular homeschool community. Is that fair, Blair? Can I call you the expert?
[00:00:38] Blair: Just, let’s go with most outspoken expert over the years.
[00:00:43] Amy: Blair has made more people mad about secular science, how about?
[00:00:49] Blair: Because there’s some really good scientists in our community. I actually was surprised. I always thought this was going to go away after we started writing about this many years ago.
My science articles that are the most read. Why Neutral Science Isn’t Neutral, and How to Vet for Secular Science. Amy actually came to me with the idea of writing the second of the two articles. And I just thought people would get this. And in fact, in talking to Kat, what we’ve been noticing lately is, this is, a problem is really gaining traction.
People coming in or wanting to recommend science courses that aren’t secular, and that they think are. Or that they purchased and turned out not to be secular.
[00:01:35] Amy: I want to say here at the beginning for full disclosure, when we started homeschooling, my daughter was in second grade. And we did it on a whim.
She was having a really hard time in school. We weren’t really sure what we should do about it. So we were like, let’s pull her out and we’ll homeschool for the rest of the semester and figure out what to do next. Of course, she ended up homeschooling all the way to high school graduation, she’s in college now.
So it worked out really well for us. But when we started doing it, I didn’t really know what to do. And I, like so many moms who start homeschooling, I went to a bunch of homeschool park days near me, and I was just like, I had my big listening ears on, I was like, what curriculum do you recommend? What are you using? What’s working for you? And I ended up buying based on the recommendation of these very nice women, like a whole group of lovely women who I met at park day, I ended up buying a really unsecular science. I’m almost embarrassed to say it to you, Blair, because it was —
[00:02:35] Blair: No, no, you have to say it because I know the name and they are doing a lot of advertising and it’s causing a lot of problems again.
I was just saw a thread where people were talking about NOEO all at them.
It’s infuriating because there are some people on the thread saying it’s got to be secular. It was a NOEO ad I happened to see on Facebook this morning. It’s got to be secular because charter schools will let you buy it.
I’m going to tell you a dirty secret. The charter school system, there are people in the charter school, working for the charter schools, and I know this happens, who are evangelicals and actually don’t have a problem with people buying non secular science curriculum.
So it’s an ongoing problem that the charter schools are consistently dealing with because in California, you can’t use materials that violate the separation of church and state. But the state of California is part of the problem, because they’ve never really done a very good job of, they need to like, reach out to SEA and say, we will pay you for a list of what is not secular, and so things slip by all the time that charter schools let people by. It’s a real shame.
[00:03:48] Amy: That is it. I think that when you go into homeschooling, and you are a secular person, you are not going into homeschooling for religious reasons, and you start looking at curriculum, it honestly doesn’t occur to you that most curriculum is going to be religious.
Most of the curriculum that you find is going to be evangelical. It is going to be religious. And it’s not always very upfront about disclosing this, and so as secular homeschool parents, that is what I learned that very first purchase. We have to be really thoughtful about what we buy, and a lot of times, we don’t we don’t know how to do that because it doesn’t occur to me that somebody’s gonna try to teach biology without evolution.
[00:04:36] Blair: I came to homeschooling because no child left behind. Sean was an early reader, was the only person in the class who was not receiving really adequate education on, from the teaching end because he already read and nobody else in the class read. So I ended up homeschooling him the following year.
And I am a scientist, degrees in evolutionary biology and chemistry, did not grow up in a particularly religious household, I live in the west coast, so I’m in like the blue bubble, and I really, I had no idea that this was really a thing in the homeschool community. And I was shocked to realize how pervasive it was through the non secular community.
Unfortunately, most people don’t pick up on things. You have a science degree, Amy, but you’re a physicist, and you really, a lot of your time has been spent in the humanities. I have a degree in evolutionary biology, so for me, it was a lot easier.
I knew what to look for.
[00:05:46] Amy: It’s crazy that you would have to have a degree in evolutionary biology, that it’s that bad and not upfront about its values.
[00:05:57] Blair: The other thing is you and I are both the activist type, obviously. We are not afraid to stand up and say this is not okay. A lot of people at that time — first of all, we didn’t have the online community we do now, so the information wasn’t as easily available.
But the other thing is that if, there’s, you’re in a group where there’s, let’s say, ten, and most of the group is religious, it’s not always comfortable to say no, that’s not secular, and so it can be really hard, especially in those smaller communities where most of the homeschoolers are religious.
It can be stressful to stand up because what if your children then don’t have anybody to play with? And so there’s a lot going on as to why people don’t stand up and say that’s not secular. Also a lot of people don’t feel they know enough. And then now, they lie, like a situation like NOEO, you heard us with Rebecca Keller.
These people are trying to indoctrinate your children. The biggest reason I initially stood up is that, I’ll be really honest, that pissed me off. The thought of people lying to children, I think of it as like a tabula rasa and the plasticity of the human brain to lie about what is factually known.
And what is it to say, to redefine scientific theory to be the common use of the word theory? That just makes me mad.
[00:07:43] Amy: It’s maddening. It is, and it feels unnecessary, too. Because clearly, there are homeschoolers out there who — this is what they want. They want this kind of evangelical curriculum. And go buy it!
But they should make it clear to people that’s what it is because nothing is more upsetting than to feel — I felt this way — like you have failed your kid because you bought this crappy,.. I think we got through one and a half lessons before I was like, wait a minute.
But I really felt like I had failed as a homeschool parent because I had bought a curriculum that went against everything that I believe.
[00:08:25] Blair: For me it was Story of the World, the first book, I’m reading the chapter where Abraham’s conversation with God is treated as if it was an actual, historically valid event. If you believe that, great, you probably aren’t listening to our podcast. It’s a part of Christian mythology. I’m reading this to my child. So then I’m having this conversation with a seven-year-old about how nobody knows if that was actually happened. Nobody ever documented a conversation with this almighty .
I didn’t feel like I failed, but I felt like if I was going to continue to be a part of this community, some educating about critical thinking around where there is factual information in support versus not. And I think that’s probably what happened to you too, Amy, because that’s how you and I came to understand that secular homeschoolers really need to start critical thinking teaching with their children early.
[00:09:29] Amy: Yeah, no, it’s so true. It’s so true. Because I think that it is going to be really rare to be a secular homeschooler and to never stumble into any kind of evangelical content through your homeschooling journey.
Because it’s not clearly labeled, it’s not clearly named, it gets recommended everywhere with no caveat. So yeah, critical thinking is the way that our kids can navigate this, but we can also, I think, if we go in armed with the right information, which I wish I’d had back then, we can do a better job of vetting science curriculum.
What makes a science curriculum secular? And Blair has, Blair has spent years refining this question and breaking down the different pieces of it. I’m really going to let her do most of the talking here because she — and you just take notes, just write down what she says — because she really knows what she’s talking about with this.
[00:10:26] Blair: The first thing I want to do is actually let you know why this is important. Because one of the things that we see all the time is, why is this important? It’s only first grade science. It’s only fourth grade science. And Amy, I do actually want to hear from you about this.
I was drawn to science. Nobody in my family is a scientist. To this day, about half of my family think anybody who goes into science should get an MD, because why else would you go into science?
Science spoke to me. There’s like this purity to it. There are answers, but there’s also huge discoveries yet to be made. If you have the type of intellect that is engaged with scientific thinking that explains how the natural and physical world works, you can come to some truths this way. You can come to understand some things, but there’s still other things like — One of the things that to this day I find kind of magical is atoms are moving all the time, there is an electron cloud, and when I touch a leaf, that the leaf doesn’t become part human and I don’t become part leaf. I know that sounds crazy, but the whole chemical aspect of that, I find really intriguing and I find it very magical.
[00:11:50] Amy: And the more you think about atoms, the more magical that seems, right? Because neither of us is a solid thing, neither you nor the leaf is actually a solid thing.
[00:11:59] Blair: There’s more empty space than there is particles. And it’s energy. It’s absolutely amazing. And frankly, I think it’s a really serves children badly who are not given the opportunity to come to understand this discipline. If you have a first grader and they’re not learning the actual science, I’ll go back to what I had to say about Keller the other day. I think that you are putting your child in a position where they’re more open to believing in things like conspiracy theories, because a part of what they were taught as factual actually isn’t.
[00:12:39] Amy: I’m also gonna say, how much do you remember about what you learned in first grade? Because I remember a lot.
The stuff that you learn in those early science classes is foundational to your entire scientific understanding. It is — it is the foundation, and if you are building on a broken foundation, on a foundation of indoctrination and deliberate misunderstanding, then I think that that is very hard to fix.
It is much easier to fix a janky wall than a janky foundation.
[00:13:14] Blair: I’m writing an article right now about using what I’m learning in these classes for The Writing Revolution science classes. And they break vocabulary and then skills to level one, level two, level three, and they talk about what makes what you learn in first grade important are the level one skills and the level two skills that you’re going to need when you get to the level three skills.
And kids who have had a solid Foundational focus, conceptual education around science are better able with the level two vocabulary and skills that you get in later grades.
[00:13:53] Amy: Yeah, I would say — I feel like this is a crazy thing to say, but it’s almost better if you accidentally end up with the evangelical curriculum when your kid is in high school.
Because it’s very easy for you and them to critique it and put it aside and do something else. It’s much worse, I think, to start out with curriculum that isn’t secular.
[00:14:15] Blair: Oh, that’s a good point, Amy. So you’re saying that if your first facts are false, it becomes much more challenging to be able to recognize when the information — I have never thought of it like that, but I’ve got to agree.
[00:14:31] Amy: Let’s hope that we never have unsecular curriculum, but if you do try to get it in high school.
No but — but talk us through so it is, it matters every step of the way, I think is what’s important. And this isn’t to make you feel bad if you’ve messed up and done something wrong because, hello, me, I’m sitting here, I did it, my kid turned out fine.
But it is also, it is because there is stuff that we can do and we have learned, sometimes the hard way, what are some of the things that we can look for when we want to vet a curriculum to know if it’s secular? But you have to start out by believing that it matters, that it’s important to use secular academic science curriculum.
[00:15:13] Blair: Then the next thing you should do, I’m going to give you tips and information, just go into the SEA Homeschoolers Facebook group. The reason I suggest that you go into the SEA homeschoolers Facebook group is you don’t have to go through all the steps that I’m about to tell you.
The best place to get the information, even on a program that isn’t being honest with you, the very best places to just go to their own website. That’s where you’re going to get a lot of this information. Do they have a statement of secular purpose? Now, if you’re looking for homeschool curriculum, they generally will. But a lot of secular science curriculum that’s not developed for the homeschool community, they won’t. This tends not to be a problem in the way that it is for history, although who knows in Florida, maybe it’s becoming a problem, and in Texas, I guess it is a problem. Yeah, go into SEA. Don’t — I’ll tell you right now, Prager U — don’t use it.
[00:16:11] Amy: Also Ron Paul, I saw some people talking about Ron Paul’s curriculum this morning, not in SEA, in another homeschool group that I belong to. And so don’t use that.
[00:16:20] Blair: But I recommend that you go to the publisher’s website . The first thing is to look for their statement of the secular purpose, and if it seems like they give you this roundabout explanation about what secular is, or they seem to be redefining it, you’re going to need to, more research is needed.
[00:16:38] Amy: Can you give us an example of what does it look like when someone’s avoiding saying it?
[00:16:43] Blair: Friendly Biology, which people in our community want to recommend, Friendly Biology. Friendly Biology. “The Christian worldview version of Friendly Biology gives credit to God as the creator of all living things. This credit is omitted from the secular version.
“The theory of evolution is not included in either version as it is our goal in writing the course to present currently accepted observations of living creatures in today’s world.” That’s just not even true.
[00:17:20] Amy: Okay, so they’re leaving out evolution in both versions. They’re not talking about evolution because they’re focusing on observing things?
[00:17:35] Blair: “The currently accepted observations of living creatures in today’s world.” So that’s actually interesting that you picked up on that. Because, nobody’s observed an organism evolving.
[00:17:46] Amy: Which isn’t actually true.
[00:17:48] Blair: Especially in the microbial world. It’s totally not true.
[00:17:52] Amy: Even just the Victorian moths, right? That were, yes, just like very basic evolution in action.
[00:18:01] Blair: Right, so for people that don’t know where during the industrial revolution, there started to be a lot more pollution and moths that used to be white speckled, that blended in with trees very well — the pollution, the smoke coated the trees. So the bark of trees was darker.
So over two generations the moths became, the white speckled version became almost non-existent or at a very low percentage of the population and the moths became dark. Because the birds would eat the white moths, and so the genetic variability shifted so there became, there was more, the phenotype, genotype shifted.
[00:18:47] Amy: I only bring that up because you don’t even need a Petri dish to understand, but so saying that evolution is not “accepted observations.”
[00:18:56] Blair: So this is what they go to. They go to currently accepted observations. One of Keller’s things is, the way she gets around the chemistry of evolution, is that you’ve never seen a rock turn into something else. You could sit and look at a rock for your entire life, and you would never see the rock evolve into something else.
[00:19:17] Amy: Yeah. Yeah. So watch out for these things because if anyone says they have a secular version where they don’t give God credit and that’s what makes it secular — I would be very wary.
[00:19:29] Blair: Advertisements that state, or when you go to their website, that parts can be removed. That’s a problem. You’re going to want to search, the way you look for this is you’re going to want to search on a publisher’s website for climate change, evolution, the big bang, the age of the earth, and look at how they treat this.
Okay, so here’s an example of from the publisher of Elemental Science and Sassafras Science. Again, non secular science. In the intermediate years, the pages that deal with the theories of evolution and the Big Bang are included as optional studies. Now a lot of people think that makes this secular.
Secular science courses do not consider the two central scientific theories, one explaining how all organisms and the other explaining how all matter got here, to be optional. Part of the problem with that is that both should be taught early so that you can incorporate it through the entire rest of the curriculum. It’s a thematic element.
[00:20:32] Amy: And in biology, how do you teach anything in biology if evolution is optional? Evolution is a — I mean am I crazy? Evolution is a really important part of biology.
[00:20:45] Blair: You need to have at least a basic understanding of it to learn about genetics, obviously, but also anatomy and physiology, systems of classification, medicine.
[00:20:58] Amy: So evolution needs to be woven throughout biology — it’s the most important. Pull it out, that’s not a good curriculum, right?
[00:21:07] Blair: Moving Beyond the Page does it, too, for evolution. And the only reason that chapter’s in there is so that charter schools will buy them. This is an area that for a lot of homeschoolers is really grey, because if it’s there, it must be secular. It’s much more complicated than that. This is not oh, we’re not going to learn about the circulatory system this year. Evolution is how all organisms came to be and how they’re all related.
[00:21:38] Amy: And you can’t study the science of life and pretend that’s not part of it.
[00:21:44] Blair: And the Big Bang, the reason the Big Bang’s taken out is to be acceptable for young Earth creationists. That’s really not secular.
Then third thing to look for is you’ll see people talking about opposing viewpoints. Okay, Amy, can you think of a couple of opposing viewpoints in science? I’m going to toss this back to you. I, if you can’t, I can, but what would you say are legitimate scientific opposing viewpoints?
[00:22:13] Amy: So I’m going to say that a really interesting opposing viewpoint that that I think is like happening in physics now that we’re like, looking at, is trying to resolve the tension between the theory of gravity and the theory of quantum mechanics.
Because in lots of ways, some of the things about them contradict each other. And yet, they both work perfectly for the things that they describe. And so I think that is a really, people are like trying to find ways to prove that one is more right or figure out like, where’s the exception?
How do they fit together? So I think those are — maybe that’s too nuanced?
[00:22:56] Blair: No, that is a good one. The opposing viewpoint I want to share with people is around climate change. What’s going to happen to the ocean currents if it keeps warming? There’s different theories of exactly what’s going to happen.
[00:23:09] Amy: Is a virus alive, which I guess you do in high school.
[00:23:14] Blair: Oh yeah. What do you think, Amy?
[00:23:16] Amy: I think yes, too, but I definitely respect the no opinion, right? I think the no opinion has a lot of I — I think it’s a valid argument. I just don’t agree with it. Which is why it’s an opposing viewpoint.
[00:23:29] Blair: The scientists at NASA think we just need to redefine what it means to be alive. Their concern is when they look at exobiology, so off planet biology, their concern is how planets are classified and what that might mean for the future of space travel.
I don’t think, just because of how long it takes to get places in space. I don’t think I’ll be around to see anybody get there, but, I think it’s cool that we’re thinking about this,
[00:23:59] Amy: So like those are reasonable opposing scientific viewpoints, but give me an — I can think of a lot of examples, but I’ll let you.
[00:24:07] Blair: Did organisms evolve? Is the earth flat? How old is the universe? Is global warming and climate change, number one, happening, and number two, caused by humans pumping, dumping carbon dioxide into the air? There’s no opposing viewpoints on those by anybody who’s not being paid. An opposing viewpoint that held on for a long time: Are cigarettes carcinogenic? Those things that I listed go into the are cigarettes carcinogenic category of legitimate science or propaganda.
I should have gotten an example from Prager U, because Texas has adopted videos from Prager U, where they’ve created this line of videos that are propaganda paid for by the fossil fuel industry, which is, has a big toe, foothold, toehold, whatever, in Texas. These videos change the narrative about how the environmental movement is harmful to people that rely on the coal industry for their livelihood and environmentalists, who think we need to shift away from fossil fuels, are creating a situation where those people won’t be able to feed their children and make their house payments.
[00:25:35] Amy: Shame on us, Blair.
[00:25:37] Blair: Yeah.
Okay. We touched on this, but does the publisher redefine terms? And I went back to Elemental again, because I thought that people might think just the whole removing the chapter thing wasn’t going to be a problem. “At Elemental, we treat scientific fact as fact and scientific theory as theory. We are not Christian or secular. We are just science.”
I’m going to tell you right now, anytime you see that, you are looking at non secular science, if it’s developed for the homeschool community, that should just send all sorts of alarm bells.
But she was on — this is an important distinction and good to understand if looking for secular science.
Oh, okay, so now she’s dialing in for the secular scientists. Scientific curriculum should treat scientific facts as scientific facts, theories as scientific theories. Many non secular science materials use the definitions for fact and theory based on their everyday usage, not their scientific definition.
“In everyday usage facts take precedence over theories. In science, the opposite is true. In other words, using the word theory tells other scientists that this idea is still being worked on. But the word fact says that the idea is proven to be true.”
[00:27:02] Amy: Wait, she just contradicted herself.
[00:27:04] Blair: Yeah, she redefines the word theory to be the common everyday usage for the word theory, not this scientific theory. That is what these people do. This is how they get people to buy their curriculum.
[00:27:25] Amy: Feels really sneaky because she’s done all the right things up to then.
[00:27:31] Blair: Yeah here’s Layers of Learning, another one we, it’s not as popular, but people think is secular. “Layers of Learning is a springboard for pursuit of knowledge. We provide facts, topics, resources, questions, and experiment ideas, and then allow you to explore and establish theories, beliefs, and ideas.”
In this case, scientific theories are being equated with beliefs. That is something you see all the time. Rebecca Keller does it, Layers of Learning does it, where they bring your child into the conversation so that your child decides if they think a theory, a scientific theory is valid or not.
[00:28:12] Amy: Oh. Which I mean, which sounds like what homeschooling is all about, right?
But it’s actually not, because that’s like disagreeing that the sky is blue. It is not like disagreeing — which, oh my gosh, I’ve disagreed about this a million times in my life with my children — whether they need a jacket today or not. That is an argument that children of 6 and 10 and 12 are totally ready to have, and their opinions count in it, but it doesn’t matter if a kid believes in evolution at 6 or 10, because evolution is just true.
[00:28:54] Blair: In science, a theory is bigger, more profound, and encompasses than a fact. A fact, is not, doesn’t take precedence over a theory and neither does a law. If you are on a website and you see them making the facts sound like they are taking precedence over the theories, they’re misleading you.
[00:29:18] Amy: If a scientific fact contradicted a scientific theory, you’d look more closely at the facts.
[00:29:25] Blair: Sure, and the theory, that’s how theories — that’s how we come to new understanding.
So one of the — so what’s happening with the theory of evolution? Scientists are working really hard to understand the first organisms, were they RNA organisms or DNA organism? The first organisms, there’s thinking that they evolved at hydrothermal vents in the ocean, because this pumping of warm water, and it’s got nutrient rich warm water, has everything needed. This is really all comes down to how did self replicating molecules evolve?
That evolution occurs is, you can consider a fact. It’s just true. It does. There’s no credible scientist, that’ll tell you that it’s any other way Than through evolution. There’s nothing about evolution that actually is anti religious.
[00:30:19] Amy: I totally agree. I have, I’ve always thought that it was a little bit crazy, not — crazy is maybe not the right word, but a little bit problematic to pit evolution and creation against each other because they really don’t —there’s nothing in religion that wouldn’t support the ideas of evolution.
[00:30:42] Blair: We’ve got a little off topic, but an interesting off topic. Another thing you can do is to check out the speakers and authors at the Great Homes School Convention.
I will share a secret with everyone. I have applied for the last 10 years to be a speaker at the Great Homeschool Convention. And the reason that I did this is I wanted to see if they would let a secular scientist speak. Because their science talks are like refuting evolution. And they have a bunch of non secular, let’s call them faux secular people at them, like Paige Hudson, the author of Elemental. If you’re a secular scientist, they will not let you speak at the Great Houseworking Convention.
[00:31:33] Amy: I am not surprised, but also that is surprising, because you would think that they would. They definitely seem excited to get homeschoolers’ money and to get homeschoolers to come out.
[00:31:44] Blair: When they go to these non secular conferences Paige Hudson, she takes her, oh, I write secular curriculum coat off, and she’s honest with that community because they’re not looking for secular science.
Now, I’m going to tell you something that’s not foolproof, it is to Google authors. If you can’t figure it out any other way. If you’ve ever heard of Supercharged Science, this is the credentials of the person writing Supercharged Science. I just took this from her website.
“Aurora Lipper here. I’m a mechanical engineer, instructor, pilot, astronomer, and busy momma for I’ve taught science classes and workshops to over 10, 000 kids since 1999. I have a bachelor’s and master’s degree in mechanical engineering with a minor in mathematics and a specialized study in high temperature gas dynamics during my PhD work at Stanford.” And she used to have as a part of this that she had done work at NASA. So I don’t know why that’s not on there anymore. Sounds great. Doesn’t it? It’s very impressive. She has decided not to weigh into the secular/non-secular world. So all of her materials are neutral.
[00:32:53] Amy: Neutral science is the absolute worst because it’s so misleading as a name. Because you see “neutral” science and you think, oh, okay, this isn’t religious. So it must be just like regular science. They’re just calling it this so that religious people will understand that there’s no God in it.
And that is not what it means.
[00:33:18] Blair: For those who are curious, go over to the SEA website and read Why Neutral Science Isn’t Neutral. It’s also going to be in the SEA magazine in the April issue. It’s such a good article. Kat said it’s such a problem that she wants more people to read it.
[00:33:34] Amy: No, I think that’s true.
I — and I think that because this is it, like, all of us, when we come to homeschooling, as secular homeschoolers I don’t think we expect this. I don’t think that we expect that companies are going to be trying to trick us into buying evangelical curriculum.
[00:33:53] Blair: We do not expect all of these Christian homeschoolers to be such liars is what it all comes down to. It’s like they’re just lying.
No, that’s terrible, but you’re right.
And someone like Lipper — I don’t know if a Lipper is a Christian homeschooler. What I know is she is lying to get the money of everybody possible. And she’s making it sound like this is going to be this really, solid science curriculum. You won’t find anything in her curriculum about the age of the universe, because she doesn’t want to offend young earth creationists, .
[00:34:31] Amy: Our kids deserve better. And honestly, I think a lot of us as homeschoolers, I know for me it was surprising to me with homeschooling how much I got to learn with my kids. It was like there were things that like suddenly clicked for me in a way that they hadn’t before. I saw connections that I hadn’t seen before.
And so I think as parents, we also deserve better. We deserve curriculum that we can trust to give us scientifically accurate information.
[00:35:00] Blair: Yeah, right, because you shouldn’t have to have a degree in evolutionary biology to know if the teachings in your biology course are actually scientific facts that support scientific theories, not a redefinition of them.
[00:35:17] Amy: So I’m going to go back to something that Blair said at the beginning of this podcast episode, which is that the SEA forums are a fantastic place to ask these questions. And I want to say, I think that SEA sometimes, especially like in other spaces, gets a lot of flack for holding the line about what is secular so hard.
And I want to say that when it comes to things like science — It’s so blurry, it’s so intentionally blurry, made so intentionally blurry by some of these curriculum companies, that it is amazing and wonderful that SEA is there to say — I mean you have an evolutionary biologist vetting this curriculum for you, looking at this curriculum and saying, yes, this is secular. No, this isn’t. And SEA is the only place on the homeschool internet that I know of where that happens. Where you can count on the curriculum, all the curriculum that’s there is absolutely secular. And if it’s not, there’s somebody who can explain to you why it’s not. And I think that is so important.
[00:36:25] Blair: I didn’t come to the homeschool community realizing there was this separation, and then I would see this misinformation and it made me mad because I knew these people were lying. I guess I just got on my soapbox about it, I started writing about it.
So when SEA was founded, it was given, it was going to be secular because I wouldn’t have anything that wasn’t. We hold the line. But we, we are fair. If someone writes a truly secular version and sends it to us, we look it over. We are really fair when we say something is not secular. We have people get mad at the admin and us all, and me probably all the time, but if you want to use non secular materials, that’s okay, just don’t be recommending them in SEA. And if you think your material is secular and we don’t, you’re incorrect. We don’t say something is non secular unless we have evidence that it’s not secular. We’ll tell you if we haven’t checked something out, but if we say it’s not secular, it’s not secular and we have the evidence to support it.
[00:37:34] Amy: And I think that is, there’s a really important distinction to be made here between a secular curriculum and a non secular curriculum — and an inclusive curriculum, or a decolonized curriculum or an intersectional curriculum. Because a curriculum can be totally secular, and it can be janky with regard to its treatment of LGBTQ+ people.
And the line of secular/not secular is the line that SEA holds, and it’s a great line. I think it would be impossible for anyone to hold all of the other lines.
[00:38:09] Blair: It’s why we have opened it up to really focus not so much on whether it contains religious information but whether it’s evidence based or not. We had to because of climate change. We have a whole bunch of people who aren’t of faith, but also don’t believe in climate change. It was really good that we did that because of the issues that come up with humanities curriculum. If somebody were to want to recommend a curriculum that was not a problem from a secular standpoint that said that what was it — enslaved people benefited from being enslaved —
[00:38:44] Amy: Yes, because they learned skills there —
[00:38:45] Blair: Yeah, that’s not an issue religiously, but the evidence doesn’t support that, and so we wouldn’t allow people to talk about the curriculum, and so we try to be pretty good.
Occasionally, as you pointed out, there does, there’s a bit of a gray area.
[00:39:03] Amy: But if a curriculum is evidence-based and secular, then that’s the criteria for SEA.
[00:39:10] Blair: You’ve got to have a criteria, and it’s not always perfect.
Yeah, I did want to, I did want to say one other thing, and that was that you can check reviews and recommendations. For example, let’s go back to Supercharged Science.
Aurora Lipper says that Supercharged Science has been recommended by several sites, including 100 Sites for Homeschoolers by homeschool. com, which says it’s inclusive. It’s actually owned by the person that owns Time 4 Learning. So it recommends Time 4 Learning all the time. But it has a lot more non secular than secular information on it.
The Blue Ribbon Award by Old School House Magazine. If you do not know that already, and you’re listening to this podcast, they don’t get much more religious than that in Old School House Magazine. So that’s an award for non secular. Top 101 Picks from Cathy Duffy, who shows — Cathy Duffy is definitely a non secular homeschooler.
She occasionally will do a review of secular materials and increasingly is doing them, but if I were to have looked at those recommendations, I would have said, for a secular homeschooler, her list of recommendations is a red flag.
[00:40:27] Amy: But that’s the thing is that you have to know these things and so now we hope that there are a few more of them that you do know so that you can make better choices for your kids and your homeschool and your curriculum. Because that, that’s what it’s all about is being able to make the best choices for your kids.
[00:40:44] Blair: Yes, and not letting some person who isn’t even being honest about what they write indocrinate your child.
[00:40:52] Amy: It’s really stressful and it’s — the world is — There’s a lot of that happening in the world right now, especially in the field of education And so so I feel better knowing that I can do things to make choices that won’t indoctrinate my kid.
So before we go though Blair was telling me before we started podcasting about this amazing book that she is reading about one of my heroes.
So Blair, will you tell us about your book?
[00:41:20] Blair: I’m reading The Outlier. So I never was not a Jimmy Carter fan, and I’m older than you, and I remember the Watergate years, although I was young then, but I remember them and I even met Spiro Agnew. A family friend knew Spiro Agnew, and we met, we, he came to dinner one night.
It was very friendly, actually. I would call my family kind of purple, as far as politically, but I was always blue. And so Jimmy Carter, I liked him. I know people felt that Jimmy Carter rained on the parade, but I don’t have trouble with those kind of truths, especially since Jimmy Carter also followed that up with what we were going to need to do to to evolve in a way that honored all Americans and so that always really appealed to me.
[00:42:17] Amy: It turns out that he was not wrong about a lot of things, right? He was right. Yeah.
[00:42:24] Blair: Yeah. People didn’t want to hear it. And then the shocking thing that happened is that the evangelicals sided with Reagan, and they’re doing it with Trump against Biden. Whether you like Biden or not, he’s definitely a man of faith. That has been very important in his life. And Carter is also a man of faith. And for the religious community to not support. It’s either cognitive dissonance or they don’t really care as much about the Christian ethics as they say they do. It’s one of the other.
[00:42:58] Amy: I’m from Georgia, and Jimmy Carter was actually president when I was born. What I really admire about him is that he did not let any of that kind of evangelical backlash against him change any of the kind of ethical ways that he believed it made sense to live his life. He went, he taught Sunday school up into his old age, and like, when he realized that he disagreed with the church that he belongs to’s position about women in the ministry, he quit the church that he belonged to his whole life.
I think that’s huge. He and his wife worked at Habitat for Humanity, like, all the time. They were always there, and without cameras, and oh, look at this famous person holding a hammer, they’re holding a hammer.
[00:43:44] Blair: And the work he did in the world to make free and fair elections. It’s so sad that he’s watching America go through this period where free and fair elections are problematic.
So the book opens, with story about when he was president, he freed an African American woman from death row. She came to live with him in the White House. She was the nanny who took care of their daughter. And she still lives in a house on his property. This is who he is. He believed in her innocence and then put her in charge of taking care of — he and Rosalyn. He would never want all the credit. He and Rosalyn put them in charge of taking care of their child.
[00:44:38] Amy: When Trump was running for president and refusing to share his taxes and give up his business holdings while he was in office, I couldn’t help thinking about Jimmy Carter and his peanut farm that he loved so much, that he gave up when he became the president because it would have been unethical for him, because maybe he would have voted for peanut subsidies in a way that would benefit him. And I just it’s such a difference. It’s just that, I miss earnest politics. I miss people who believe in things and act on those beliefs and not just people who have talking points.
I hate soundbite — I hate soundbite politics.
[00:45:21] Blair: It’s so sad. I wish we started having people running for president who didn’t say, I’m like Reagan, or I wish we had people running for office that said, I’m like Jimmy Carter.
That’s who I want to be.
[00:45:32] Amy: I actually think, maybe I hope, but I actually think that we are going to see pushback against this age of Reagan-esque presidents. Presidents who are, well —
[00:45:44] Blair: Trump is not Reagan.
[00:45:45] Amy: Yes, but presidents who like thrive on the media and on soundbite and on saying things that they don’t mean — I would love to see a pushback.
[00:45:55] Blair: I’m going to tell you who I would like to see as the next president. I’m going to tell y’all right now. No, I don’t mean in the next president, Biden versus Trump. I’m not even going to go there.
[00:46:03] Amy: We’re all going to vote for Biden. Even if we’re tired of voting for old white men, it’s our job to vote for Biden.
[00:46:07] Blair: But this is, this is who I would like to see run after Biden, after this, in four and a half, five years.
Michelle Obama. That’s who I want to be. That’s who I want to be. You’re so good at doing it. You don’t know what you’ve got.
[00:46:19] Amy: If she doesn’t want to do it, I wouldn’t blame her because she has already given so much of her life to this crap.
[00:46:28] Blair: She is a person that holds the line at truth and honesty and love for her people. For the people and just — I’m a fan everyone.
[00:46:40] Amy: She’s an amazing woman. She’s yeah, she’s super amazing. She could be the next Jimmy Carter. She,
[00:46:46] Blair: That’s what, don’t use, she’s got me in her. So anyway.
[00:46:50] Amy: Thank you. Thank you so much for listening read he Outlier if you too are a closet Jimmy Carter fan And we will see you soon for more talk about secular homeschooling. Have a great week. Bye everybody.
