Jump to content

Menu

X-Post- Has anybody here used Simple Schooling Middle School Physics?


Recommended Posts

Someone on another thread mentioned using Simple Schooling Middle School Physics so I went and checked it out.

 

I've never heard of this before but have spent the better part of the last year searching for a physics curriculum. I'm wondering if anybody else here has some experience with it and could share a review?

 

I'd like to know if it's fairly rigorous? Workbookish or living books? What does it use for hands-on experiments- kits or materials around the home pulled together for experiments? Are there lots of experiments? Did you kids enjoy the program and how was their retention afterwards? Do you feel it is worth the money and would you use it again?

 

I did see that they have a sample up but it's of the first several pages that explains the program rather than samples of the actual lessons so it's hard for me to figure if this program will work for me or not.

 

Also, for grade 5 would I be buying both levels I and II? Is it even do-able for a grade 5 student?

 

Thanks for any input you can offer! I need to end this search for physics curriculum. :glare:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I haven't used the Physics program, but I recently purchased the one-year subscription to Simple Schooling, hoping that my DD could do the interactives and some of the printed unit studies independently, because I'm really pressed for time right now. I've been extremely disappointed in the materials, and have decided that I simply can't use them due to the number of errors.

 

These are a few of the errors I found — and I've only just skimmed a few of the units:

 

(1) The Weather unit says "The sun is so hot that it is able to send heat 63,000 miles to our earth."

Actually the sun is 93,000,000 miles from Earth, not 63,000!

 

(2) The Ecology unit says "Every living thing on Earth requires sunlight in some form or other."

This is not true; there are entire ecosystems surrounding the deep sea vents that are based on chemosynthesis, not photosynthesis.

 

(3) The Ecology unit also says "Penguins only live near the South Pole."

Actually, penguins live along the west coast of South America as far north as the equator! Other species inhabit New Zealand, South Africa, and Namibia.

 

(4) The Science of Horses unit says "All horses genetically start out as red or bay."

Not true. The "base" color of horses is determined by the Extension gene; horses are either red (ee) or black (EE or Ee). "Bay" horses carry an entirely different gene called Agouti (which "red" horses can also carry, BTW).

 

(5) The word abdomen is misspelled ("abdoman") four times in the vocabulary section of the Butterfly interactive. If this was just a typo in the text, it would be different, but this is in a list of vocabulary words, and it's misspelled four times. This is the only interactive unit I had my DD try, and I made her quit after I saw the vocabulary section, so there could be even more errors I didn't see.

 

And these are just the errors that jumped out at me while skimming — I have no idea how many other errors there might be in areas where I'm less familiar with the material. There are also numerous grammatical issues and other problems that made me decide this program is unusable for us. It was $97 down the drain.

 

Jackie

Link to comment
Share on other sites

WOW! That is a lot of money! Is there no return policy? I would definitely be emailing/calling them about the errors and requesting a refund.

Not only did she refuse a refund, she insisted that the errors I pointed out were not really errors (and I only cited a few of the MANY errors I've found), and she accused me of trying to defraud her, by downloading all of the unit studies and then asking for a refund.

 

Regarding the errors: Apparently the phrase "NEAR the South Pole" should cover the west coast of Peru and the Galapagos islands. She claims she purposely "decided to simplify things by using the term bay instead of red" — actually she used the word bay instead of black, and referring to entirely the wrong gene does not constitute "simplification." She also snarkily replied "I could give you a lecture on how sunlight does indeed drive all life on Earth, it is called the food chain, but I prefer not to." In fact, the food chains in some deep sea ecosystems are based on chemosynthesis, not photosynthesis, and the mere existence of chemosynthetic bacteria refutes the statement that "All living things rely on sunlight."

 

I had also objected to the description of Native Americans in one of the history units as "savages" who were "treacherous and cruel," and she replied that those words were "taken from an old history book and I don't censor the words of other writers." Well, except that those words were not in quotes and there were no sources cited, so if she took that passage word for word from another book, then that should have been properly cited. Otherwise it is reasonable to assume that those words represent the opinion of the author.

 

She also said she should have banned me and deleted my account because I had downloaded from 3 different IP addresses in one night — apparently she's never heard of Dynamic IP Addressing, which is the default setting in many home networks, including mine. In many cases I had to try multiple times to download a file, because the downloads dropped out and the files were corrupted and unopenable. But she cited as "proof" of my attempted fraud that I had downloaded multiple copies on multiple computers. In fact, I have a single openable copy of most files and several unopenable corrupted files that never did download properly, and they are all on a single computer.

 

So not only am I out $97, I've been accused of fraud and "bad manners," and been told that I don't know anything about food chains or horse genetics (we used to breed horses). Nice, huh?

 

Jackie

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had also objected to the description of Native Americans in one of the history units as "savages" who were "treacherous and cruel," and she replied that those words were "taken from an old history book and I don't censor the words of other writers."

I decided to copy and paste the offensive paragraph into google to see what would turn up, and discovered that virtually all of the text in the Simple Schooling Explorers Unit was lifted word for word from a book called A First Course in American History by Jeannette Rector Hodgdon. The copyright on this book is now expired, so this isn't copyright violation, but it is still plagiarism. It is unethical to claim someone else's work as your own, and IMHO it is even more unethical to then sell that work to unsuspecting parents who don't know that the "new" history curriculum they're buying was actually stolen from a book published in 1908.

 

ETA: I've been googling chunks of text from some of the other units, including science units, and apparently "borrowing" large chunks of text from other sources, without attribution, is pretty common in these units.

 

Ironic that she accused me of fraud, eh?

 

Jackie

Edited by Corraleno
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...