What do you look for when choosing curriculum?

[Kathryn]

I'm asking because I am absolutely flabbergasted by what John Holzmann wrote this morning on a thread on the K-8 Curriculum board, so I'm wondering if I'm really strange or something.

 

If you're not interested in doing research; if you want simply to be spoon-fed your history and know that everything your history text teaches you is perfectly accurate and from impeccable sources: clearly, you will have to find your texts and curriculum somewhere else than in anything I have written or anything published or sold by Sonlight Curriculum.

 

When I research curriculum, I'm looking for just that, the closest to perfectly accurate and from impeccable sources as I can get. I assumed everyone wanted that. Am I wrong? Do people really look for and want curriculum that they know will have accuracy issues that they'll need to research on their own and throw out parts of and explain to their children are not correct?

 

I'm just speechless.

[Lily_Grace]

That is the big reason we switched to using Jackdaws and internet-found primary sources for history. I don't WANT to feed my kid someone else's interpretation of someone's point of view! I don't want history to be a spoonfed subject. I want my child to consider many interpretations and acknowledge that we cannot ever know exactly, but how to look at the data and make an informed conclusion. I have Hakim's History of US sitting nearly untouched on my shelf. Same with several other books. I want him to *do* history, not sit through it.

 

The only subjects I prefer to use textbooks for are math and science - and I have to even push through the crud there. Apologia just got crossed off my list forever - if they are such a company that they would post misinformation/lies and call it truth, how can I trust them to understand basic scientific fact and write it down in a clear text?

[Kathryn]

The thread began by someone asking about John's notes in Core 100 defending slavery. After a discussion that mainly centered around the unreliability of the WPA slave narratives in determining how former slaves felt about the institution of slavery, John posted a rather long post detailing why he felt comfortable saying that it wasn't all that bad to be a slave and that parents and children should do their own research.

 

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something (and I'm open to that possibility, I've been up all night with a vomiting child), but I'm really confused by the statement that he's done all this research to counter the books Sonlight uses (History of Us in this case) and put it in the notes for parents using the program, but then if you expect to be able to trust what your curriculum is telling you and the sources upon which they rely, you should use something else. I thought the point of picking a curriculum was trusting a provider. Why not just buy the books and skip spending hundreds on IGs if you can't trust the notes?

 

ETA link to the thread: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/468105-is-holzman-white-washing-slavery-in-sonlight-core-100/

[Lily_Grace]

 

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something (and I'm open to that possibility, I've been up all night with a vomiting child), but I'm really confused by the statement that he's done all this research to counter the books Sonlight uses (History of Us in this case) and put it in the notes for parents using the program, but then if you expect to be able to trust what your curriculum is telling you and the sources upon which they rely, you should use something else. I thought the point of picking a curriculum was trusting a provider. Why not just buy the books and skip spending hundreds on IGs if you can't trust the notes?

 

ETA link to the thread: http://forums.welltr...light-core-100/

 

I think you have to temper your trust. Accuracy is a hard achievement. But if I'm shelling out 'hundreds' for an IG, I first ask myself where they're getting the information. Is it a WAHM who published something she used for her kids? Is it a well known company who uses a historian (or more than one) to edit and proofread? How forthcoming are they with the company info? If I email them, will I get an answer to that question?

 

Balance, which I think Sonlight is going for, can please some, but not others. Sonlight's main draw is the historical lit. If the IG is pretending to be the be-all and end-all, that's a problem they'll have to confront (or parents will have to accept its shortcomings).

[Rebecca VA]

Sonlight is annoying with their "don't use our materials if you want your child ... (to have a substandard education, to be poorly prepared for college, to not have an impact on the world, etc.) tactics. They're trying to scare people into buying their curriculum. (And BTW, they've been talking this way since they first started -- I was irritated by the Sonlight promotional literature almost 20 years ago.) I think it's poor salesmanship to make baiting comments like that, and it makes me dislike their company A LOT.

[HS Mom in NC]

History can be very subjective if you're looking for interpretation. Interpretation means the lessons learned from history. What to watch for, work toward and avoid in our own times is the lesson from history. What is good and what is bad differs from culture to culture and value system to value system. Those issues are usually covered in the Logic Stage (cause and effects) and Rhetoric Stage (application and persuasion.) What count as problems and what count as solutions can differ too. Then there are the sticky issues of deciding what were causes of those problems and what were the resulting effects of those problems. It's debatable. People will disagree. Don't blindly accept someone else's views on these things. Part of being a teacher and being a student is seeking out the differing views, evaluating them and accepting or rejecting them. Most people didn't have this experience in school so it's often news to them that learning history is different than what did as kids. Then they're surprised when someone who does do this with history tells them to go and do the same.

 

Image a devout Catholic and a person who is very Reformed in their Protestant theology teaching the cause and effect of The Reformation and Counter Reformation in history. Even the facts of the Grammar Stage could be in dispute. What each of those people would say in that situation is very likely to be different. The names, places and dates may be a perfect match, but what each historical figure and event was all about and their motivations, what resulted from it, and whether or not we should strive to do the same or guard against it will have to be determined by the the teacher and the student.

 

There are as many ways to use any specific curriculum as there are homeschoolers who own that curriculum. Never feel obligated to use it the way it's recommended by the writers and publishers whether it's SL or WTM or anything else. Even annoying condescending writers and publishers may produce something that is partially or entirely useful to you. Take what you like from it if you find it useful and ignore the rest. I've never used SL materials, but if I found that something they published served my homeschool well, I wouldn't choose to not use the materials just because someone associated with producing it is an A$$. If I follow the A$$ principle, very few products of all kinds would ever make it too my house for my use because there are A$$ES in the production of every product out there. The world is full of A$$E$. I don't allow them to impact my life or limit my choices.

[SarahW]

I'm asking because I am absolutely flabbergasted by what John Holzmann wrote this morning on a thread on the K-8 Curriculum board, so I'm wondering if I'm really strange or something.

 

 

 

When I research curriculum, I'm looking for just that, the closest to perfectly accurate and from impeccable sources as I can get. I assumed everyone wanted that. Am I wrong? Do people really look for and want curriculum that they know will have accuracy issues that they'll need to research on their own and throw out parts of and explain to their children are not correct?

 

I'm just speechless.

 

 

 

Ugh. I'm just totally confused by that quote.

 

If you're not interested in doing research; if you want simply to be spoon-fed your history and know that everything your history text teaches you is perfectly accurate and from impeccable sources: clearly, you will have to find your texts and curriculum somewhere else than in anything I have written or anything published or sold by Sonlight Curriculum.

 

So, is he saying that if you want a history text that is "perfectly accurate" from "impeccable sources" you don't want to buy anything from him or SL???

 

Or is he being sarcastic?

 

:confused1:

[Kathryn]

History can be very subjective if you're looking for interpretation. Interpretation means the lessons learned from history. What to watch for, work toward and avoid in our own times is the lesson from history. What is good and what is bad differs from culture to culture and value system to value system. Those issues are usually covered in the Logic Stage (cause and effects) and Rhetoric Stage (application and persuasion.) What count as problems and what count as solutions can differ too. Then there are the sticky issues of deciding what were causes of those problems and what were the resulting effects of those problems. It's debatable. People will disagree. Don't blindly accept someone else's views on these things. Part of being a teacher and being a student is seeking out the differing views, evaluating them and accepting or rejecting them. Most people didn't have this experience in school so it's often news to them that learning history is different than what did as kids. Then they're surprised when someone who does do this with history tells them to go and do the same.

 

Image a devout Catholic and a person who is very Reformed in their Protestant theology teaching the cause and effect of The Reformation and Counter Reformation in history. Even the facts of the Grammar Stage could be in dispute. What each of those people would say in that situation is very likely to be different. The names, places and dates may be a perfect match, but what each historical figure and event was all about and their motivations, what resulted from it, and whether or not we should strive to do the same or guard against it will have to be determined by the the teacher and the student.

 

There are as many ways to use any specific curriculum as there are homeschoolers who own that curriculum. Never feel obligated to use it the way it's recommended by the writers and publishers whether it's SL or WTM or anything else. Even annoying condescending writers and publishers may produce something that is partially or entirely useful to you. Take what you like from it if you find it useful and ignore the rest. I've never used SL materials, but if I found that something they published served my homeschool well, I wouldn't choose to not use the materials just because someone associated with producing it is an A$$. If I follow the A$$ principle, very few products of all kinds would ever make it too my house for my use because there are A$$ES in the production of every product out there. The world is full of A$$E$. I don't allow them to impact my life or limit my choices.

 

I'm a historian by training. I'm well aware of what history is and is not. And using sources whose utility in determining slave/master, black/white relations, etc., has been dismissed by actual historians for decades (for reasons expounded upon in the thread referenced) to make the statement that "many black slaves were well pleased with their station in life" does not qualify as history in my book.

[Catwoman]

I'm asking because I am absolutely flabbergasted by what John Holzmann wrote this morning on a thread on the K-8 Curriculum board, so I'm wondering if I'm really strange or something.

 

 

Quote

 

If you're not interested in doing research; if you want simply to be spoon-fed your history and know that everything your history text teaches you is perfectly accurate and from impeccable sources: clearly, you will have to find your texts and curriculum somewhere else than in anything I have written or anything published or sold by Sonlight Curriculum.

 

When I research curriculum, I'm looking for just that, the closest to perfectly accurate and from impeccable sources as I can get. I assumed everyone wanted that. Am I wrong? Do people really look for and want curriculum that they know will have accuracy issues that they'll need to research on their own and throw out parts of and explain to their children are not correct?

 

I'm just speechless.

 

 

Wow, he's not much of an egomaniac or anything, is he? :glare:

[Tammyla]

Oh...Sonlight...

 

To me, they grow less and less inviting. I used to love getting the catalog and dreaming of switching. Now, not so much.

 

When researching curriculum, I tend to look at everything I can.

[gardenmom5]

:huh: . Okay, I'm going to give a benefit of the doubt interpretation. (with the disclaimer I don't buy from sonlight anyway. I also expect to need outside readings.) It's possible he meant that someone who wants all the bases covered wouldn't be happy with any boxed curriculum (few cover all the bases. unless you want a really unwieldy textbook . . . .) then again, maybe he's bluntly stating he picks and chooses what he includes according to his worldview and only people who hold that worldview would like his curriculum.

[gardenmom5]

Wow, he's not much of an egomaniac or anything, is he? :glare:

I interpreted it as saying "I haven't done everything, you'll have to do stuff too." sounds more like he's saying his curriculum is "incomplete". (which isn't an admission I think a rational business person would want to make . . . )

[Crimson Wife]

I do look for history materials that go along with my worldview because so much of history is subject to different interpretations. I'm not interested in materials that show an anti-Christian bias (like Joy Hakim's History of US, which is what the SonLight IG in question are discussing). I don't use SL because I have a policy of not purchasing from Protestant publishers. But I don't think there exists a perfectly objective history program. All authors have their biases, and as a result, I prefer to purchase materials that go along with my religious and political beliefs.

[Wheres Toto]

At this point in time, I look for simple. My kids are too young for me to be interested in spending a lot of time having to confirm the materials are correct. For me that applies to history and science and is why I refuse to use any "neutral" science curriculum. For history I want to use something that gives a good overview and then add a variety of materials and books to expand on the topic. If I'm spending a bunch of money for my spine I want to it to be as accurate as possible, which to me means in agreement with the majority of historians.

 

If I have a child in high school that is very interested in history, I may see the benefit to having them use an incomplete and/or inaccurate source so they can then compare it to original sources and other materials, as a critical study or something. But that kid would have to really love history and want to do it on their own, because I have no interest in doing it.