Need perspective about BJU curriculum (Christian Worldview)

[Meadowlark]

I have been lurking on the BJU DL facebook page. Man, do those ladies LOVE that curriculum. I'm reading about how it has made their lives easier, they could never homeschool without it, etc etc. We have dabbled in some BJU over the years-a few years of math and 1 year of DL English for 3rd. My overall view is that it is a solid, traditional program much like what would be done in public school.

However, their distance learning classes really intrigue me. With a bunch of kids, I know I can't possibly teach every subject to every kid and so I do want to outsource a few things. But here's the thing-we're Catholic. Yep, I know. I've read about the history of BJU and have heard a few heeds of warning on here, but now it's time to dig in and decide once and for all if we can take a few subjects and come out okay on the Catholic end.

Obviously, I can't ask this there so I'm asking here. Their worldview is biblical Christian-evangelical Christian and Protestant. I know that. I also know that I would see the most conflict in the subjects of science and history. But here's the thing, it's science and history that I want to outsource. Without going through every video, I can't possibly know if it slams Catholicism or if it leans way one way or another. I love that it is Christian and incorporates God in the studies. No problem there at all.

So, what I'm asking is, specifically-let's say my kids took BJU science and maybe heritage studies. Would would their belief system be on the other end of say, 8th grade? What types of ideologies would be interwoven throughout subtly or unsubtly? What topics of study (besides the Reformation of course) would I need to cut out or watch out for.

Can you tell I really want to make this work? My husband is NOT Catholic so we DO teach our kids that there are other views in the world. It's most important to me that my kids grow up knowing of God's love and that they have hope in salvation. What do you think? Will BJU work for us, at least a little?

[Innisfree]

I have no experience with BJU, so can't help there. But Dd16 did take several classes from Kolbe, with fairly good results. If you'd like a Catholic perspective, you might want to check them out.

[EmseB]

Can I ask why you want to make BJU work rather than another DL program that is Catholic or at least more ecumenical?

[katilac]

I haven't looked through BJU materials recently so I can't speak to the materials directly, but I can give some context on BJU in general. BJU is historically and vocally anti-Catholic, but has been toning down the rhetoric in recent years. I'll give a few dates and examples with links, and you can explore further. 

1978: Bob Jones, Jr.: “Pope Paul VI, archpriest of Satan, a deceiver and an anti-Christ, has, like Judas, gone to his own place.”

2000:  the Catholic Church is “satanic counterfeit, an ecclesiastic tyranny over the souls of men,” and the “Mother of Harlots.” (website)

2000: BJU dropped its ban on interracial dating 

2003: Bob Jones III: called Catholicism a cult which calls itself Christian 

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/kschiffer/the-amazing-catholic-art-at-anti-catholic-bob-jones-university

https://www.catholicleague.org/has-bob-jones-university-changed/

 https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/marchweb-only/53.0.html

Each link will give more information. 

[mom2att]

I'd run far away from BJU if I were you. I find their materials way too rigid and dogmatic--and I'm an evangelical protestant. My son did an outsourced class using their Earth Science textbook in 8th grade. We made it through the first quarter before dropping the class, despite losing out on the almost $400 we had paid. I could not spend one more day in that textbook.

[Meadowlark]

56 minutes ago, EmseB said:

Can I ask why you want to make BJU work rather than another DL program that is Catholic or at least more ecumenical?

Absolutely. It's because I have yet to come across a Catholic distance learning option that I like. I'm familiar with Homeschool Connections, Kolbe and that's about it. But the thing that I like about BJU is that there is a teacher teaching directly to a student and not to the whole class. Also, there is no chat box. That is hugely distracting in my opinion and most live classes have them (for good reason) yet still distracting. I'm not necessarily looking for a live class either-just recorded. I also like the visuals, color and short videos that the teachers incorporate into their teaching. Is there a Catholic option that fits in that box?

[Meadowlark]

36 minutes ago, mom2att said:

I'd run far away from BJU if I were you. I find their materials way too rigid and dogmatic--and I'm an evangelical protestant. My son did an outsourced class using their Earth Science textbook in 8th grade. We made it through the first quarter before dropping the class, despite losing out on the almost $400 we had paid. I could not spend one more day in that textbook.

This is exactly what I'd love more info on. What do you mean by rigid and dogmatic? Can you give me examples? I keep hearing these types of warnings but I don't really know what they mean or how to interpret them.

[MercyA]

BJU is the one curriculum my husband absolutely will not consider using, due to what he considers extreme inaccuracies in their science curriculum—and we are theologically conservative (Old Earth) creationists!

[Twolittleboys]

Okay, I am not really familiar with BJU but based on my impression (and what I am reading here) I would definitely not use it for science as it is unlikely to be "mainstream science".

[Faith-manor]

30 minutes ago, Meadowlark said:

This is exactly what I'd love more info on. What do you mean by rigid and dogmatic? Can you give me examples? I keep hearing these types of warnings but I don't really know what they mean or how to interpret them.

All of their science is Young Earth, Literal 6 day creation. Some scientific principles are misrepresented in order to support that view.

Other issues that may not mesh with your worldview:

Biology text pg 162 - Some babies die very soon after birth as a result of genetic disorders. It appears that God designed into the genetic mechanism of humans (and most organisms) a genetic screen that eliminates many greatly deformed individuals, preventing major genetic disorders from continuing.

Teacher's Edition: The level of carbon dioxide (CO₂) is normally kept in check by green plants, which utilize it for photosynthesis. The combustion of fossil fuels like coal and petroleum also releases large amounts of CO₂, which is known to be increasing in the atmosphere. The earth's temperature is kept warm enough to encourage abundant life as a result of the insulating effect of a layer of CO₂and other gasses. These gases allow sunlight to pass through but also trap the radiation that bounces off the earth, keeping it from returning to space. This is known as the greenhouse effect. Some scientists have analyzed long-term climate data and have noted a slight increase in the earth's temperature over the past century. While the data is far from conclusive, some blame CO₂and other "greenhouse gasses" for the increase. They blame this perceived global warming on car engines, electric power plants, and other major sources of CO₂ emissions.

pg. 141 (this is incorrect) 

Not all genetic traits are exhibited as purely dominant or recessive. Many alleles express what is termed incomplete dominance. Incomplete dominance occurs when two or more alleles are expressed, resulting in a phenotype that is intermediate, or a blending, of the two traits. Flower color in snapdragons and other common garden flowers demonstrates this condition. When homozygous red and homozygous white snapdragons are crossed, all of the heterozygous offspring are pink.

Why? In snapdragons neither red nor white is completely dominant; therefore, in a heterozygous flower both alleles express themselves, resulting in a pink color. ..

Incomplete dominance occurs when ONE allele is not completely expressed.

[Zoo Keeper]

Thanks to a family whose children have graduated, I have BJU's World History and U. S. History books for high school (and Economics, and American Government, and...).  I would not recommend them for strengthening a Catholic perspective.  Especially in the upper grades, the textbook writers assume that their audience is conservative Evangelical Protestant, and *anything else* is ungodly/false teaching/ a cult.  Especially in the history books, there are numerous questions that are specifically trying to shape the student's worldview (compare ___ to ____; why is this not ___ for a Christian?) and Protestant revivals/missionaries/movements are integrated into the history.

I am a more conservative Protestant, and I had to roll my eyes or skip some questions when my son used the U.S. History book last year.  We used it as an example of finding bias (which is true of any textbook).  😉   I would use other sources to help counterbalance, if you do go with BJU.  We did activities from Reading Like a Historian and also read Lies My Teacher Told Me.

 

[scholastica]

Have you looked at Memoria Press’ online offerings? They now have quite a few classes available for 3rd grade and up. I know they do have the chat box in the high school,  but I don’t know if they have it in the younger grades. We are Catholic and have never had any problems with their classes. 

[teachermom2834]

4 minutes ago, scholastica said:

Have you looked at Memoria Press’ online offerings? They now have quite a few classes available for 3rd grade and up. I know they do have the chat box in the high school,  but I don’t know if they have it in the younger grades. We are Catholic and have never had any problems with their classes. 

How and when the chat box is used depends on the teacher. Some have a chat going the whole time. Others have a chat box the students can type a question or answer in and it just goes to the teacher. MP is very receptive to questions. You could email and ask directly how the teachers for the classes you are interested in use the chat box. We’ve had a variety of set ups both in elementary and high school classes. 

[ktgrok]

I'd use Apologia before BJU. 

[Meadowlark]

5 minutes ago, scholastica said:

Have you looked at Memoria Press’ online offerings? They now have quite a few classes available for 3rd grade and up. I know they do have the chat box in the high school,  but I don’t know if they have it in the younger grades. We are Catholic and have never had any problems with their classes. 

Yes! Actually, quite a bit especially for my future 6th grader. The thing is, I'm not 100% sold as I've heard really great reviews of a few teachers, and mediocre reviews from others. If I'm paying $500 a class (yikes!), I'm pretty sure my expectations will be pretty darn high. But it's a great idea to email them and ask about specific teachers with the chat boxes. It reminds me of kids talking during class from the examples I've looked at and I know my kid-he'll be super distracted by that.  Especially for my younger kids, I just want someone else talking without the chat. 

[Meadowlark]

27 minutes ago, Æthelthryth the Texan said:

I agree with OKBud. It's going to depend on your kid. And you can always use things you disagree with as a jumping off point. As a Christian, I've yet to find any curricula I agree with 100% theologically speaking, so there are always going to be things I "yes, but" with my kids when it comes to texts. If it appeals to you, it appeals to your kids, and it makes your life easier, personally I'd go for it. 

ETA- I'm saying this as you obviously know the bias coming in. Were you a Catholic who had never heard of BJU or any of the potential issues though, I'd have said, no. But your options are limited, so I get the "good enough" sometimes is what it has to be. 

I think my issue with using this type of curricula, is that the distance learning will be done by himself. I can look through the textbooks yes, but I won't actually be looking over his shoulder as he listens. I know my Catholic friends would think even considering it is blasphemy...but honestly, the Catholic community is really lacking in quality online classes. I will check out Kolbe for sure, but so far, haven't seen anything else that I like quite as much.

 

[Carol in Cal.]

My issues with BJU focus more on their whitewashing of slavery in US history.  

[FriedClams]

We used BJU for science from 6 through chemistry. My kid who went took chemistry and biology was extremely well prepared for the SAT subject tests. She also scored extremely high on the ACT science (which admittedly is more reading comprehension than science). So yes, there is a strong YE creationist bent, but the specific science is, imho, strong enough to have your student very well prepared for secular standardized subject testing. 

I will add that biology and chemistry are HARD and VERY detail oriented. They are NOT easy classes. I think they DLO makes them easily an "honors" level course. My science-loving future engineer enjoyed them but I did not use them for my more easy going student.

Edited January 8, 2019 by FriedClams

[FriedClams]

3 hours ago, Ktgrok said:

I'd use Apologia before BJU. 

I've used both and BJU DLO was /substantially/ more rigorous. For one kid BJU was great, it would have been overkill for the other. 

Edited January 8, 2019 by FriedClams

[Farrar]

32 minutes ago, Carol in Cal. said:

My issues with BJU focus more on their whitewashing of slavery in US history.  

Yeah, seriously. Like, you know you're getting young earth "science" and maybe are prepared to mitigate that. But do you know about the side of racism?

Actually, I don't fully understand giving money to a company that calls your religion Satanic and a cult even if they're not directly going to do it to your kids' faces. So... maybe I'm not getting this at all.

[dirty ethel rackham]

3 hours ago, Meadowlark said:

I think my issue with using this type of curricula, is that the distance learning will be done by himself. I can look through the textbooks yes, but I won't actually be looking over his shoulder as he listens. I know my Catholic friends would think even considering it is blasphemy...but honestly, the Catholic community is really lacking in quality online classes. I will check out Kolbe for sure, but so far, haven't seen anything else that I like quite as much.

 

This is all the more reason to not use BJU.  You can't mitigate the subtle and not-so-subtle issues if you are not the one teaching it.  I once had one of my kids attend a civics class taught by a fellow homeschooling mom.  It all sounded so good on paper.  Since I wasn't there, I didn't realize a lot of the garbage she taught until the class was over.  (I didn't realize that she was heavily into TJE.)  My kid, who loved to read on this topic and found lots of other books that were less biased, ended up actually burning one of the books (with my permission.)  And I apologized for not paying closer attention.  We were in a situation where we really needed something to fill that hole in our plan and I was tapped out dealing with some big life problems.  

If I couldn't find a Catholic program, I'd use a secular program or something from a more mainline faith tradition.  And if your kid has a problem with chat boxes and finds them distracting, but the rest of the program is sound, then I'd probably sit nearby to help keep the kid focused and on task.  

[teachermom2834]

We are Catholic but live in the Bible belt and have no Catholic homeschool community or support at all. So we have had to become comfortable navigating in evangelical and frankly very anti- Catholic waters to have any homeschool social contact or use a co-op. All that to say we tolerate a lot of differences and we bite our tongues and focus on all we have in common and are not easily offended. 

Over time at co-op my kids ended up using some materials I wouldn’t have chosen otherwise. I never put them in a class that used BJU but we did end up with ABeka a few times. I realize BJU is more rigorous (or so I have heard) but I will say that eventually the tone and content of the books and/or instructors who used these materials really was a turn off. What started with an internal eyeroll by the end of the year had my kids thinking the courses were just useless. Some things that (in our opinion) were just not factual or super biased really colored the whole course as flawed. I guess my kids threw the baby out with the bath water and really didn’t respect the teachers or authors of the books much. And we aren’t even super duper loud easily offended Catholics. 

I also did not like spending money on materials I thought represented my faith inaccurately or unfairly. 

So...I have done it when I thought it was the best option or that it just wouldn’t be a huge deal. But it wasn’t really successful or worthwhile for us. I realize you were asking specifically about BJU so my response is likely not at all helpful.

We have been happy with Memoria Press and WTMA. We liked Kolbe fine too but the last I checked they were even more expensive than the others. Good luck finding something that works for you!

[J-rap]

We used BJU for English and Literature some years, and I really liked their curriculum for that.  But no way would I use them for science and history -- those are the subjects where religious curriculums sometimes go beyond academics.  I had a problem with Apologia science too.  We used it for one year and I stopped.  (We're a Christian protestant family.)

BUT, if you're a family that is able to or enjoys sitting down and discussing all the things you disagree with and you generally think everything else about it is great, then go for it.

 

[sarahbobeara]

Two of my kids used BJU 6th grade science, which was ok for them. I needed them to be more independent and it served its purpose before they each moved back to Apologia General Science in 7th grade. I don't think any permanent damage was done, this would have been 5-6 years ago.

I purchased BJU Cultural Geography for my oldest daughter's 9th grade history requirement (3 years ago). She had done Notgrass American history the year before, and Story of the World in the years leading up to it. Well...I was so disappointed in the harshly judgemental tone of BJU. When covering Ireland, it mentioned how alcoholism was rampant and the phrasing made it sound like Catholicism was to blame for it. We stopped using it that day. I felt that adding that sentence without any data or facts regarding it was the last straw. Before that, it had been simply tedious and included the worst kind of regurgitative worksheets and exams.  Tests would include the most worthless questions like : ________% of Indian citizens were born in (insert hard to pronounce, renamed 4x, easily forgettable region). And the multiple choice answers would be like 24%, 25%, 26% or 27%. I felt like the students were being tested on piddly DETAILS that I wouldn't expect anyone (even Indians) to care about. It was almost $200 for the set of books, and they were HUGE, THICK books. I gave them away to the library, but I should have just recycled them. I am not Catholic but that seemed nasty for a Christian-based publisher. 

[Meadowlark]

2 hours ago, sarahbobeara said:

Two of my kids used BJU 6th grade science, which was ok for them. I needed them to be more independent and it served its purpose before they each moved back to Apologia General Science in 7th grade. I don't think any permanent damage was done, this would have been 5-6 years ago.

I purchased BJU Cultural Geography for my oldest daughter's 9th grade history requirement (3 years ago). She had done Notgrass American history the year before, and Story of the World in the years leading up to it. Well...I was so disappointed in the harshly judgemental tone of BJU. When covering Ireland, it mentioned how alcoholism was rampant and the phrasing made it sound like Catholicism was to blame for it. We stopped using it that day. I felt that adding that sentence without any data or facts regarding it was the last straw. Before that, it had been simply tedious and included the worst kind of regurgitative worksheets and exams.  Tests would include the most worthless questions like : ________% of Indian citizens were born in (insert hard to pronounce, renamed 4x, easily forgettable region). And the multiple choice answers would be like 24%, 25%, 26% or 27%. I felt like the students were being tested on piddly DETAILS that I wouldn't expect anyone (even Indians) to care about. It was almost $200 for the set of books, and they were HUGE, THICK books. I gave them away to the library, but I should have just recycled them. I am not Catholic but that seemed nasty for a Christian-based publisher. 

This was super helpful. It's exactly what I kind of suspected (and read about) but have never experienced or heard specifically about. I'm not interested in bias in the least bit. In fact, that's what I'm trying to get away from in the public schools! I mean, I know every textbook is biased but my goodness-what have we come to? Everyone pushing their ideologies? I'm also not interested in tedious, unimportant facts such as the percent example. Ugh, thank you!

[lewelma]

Isn't Seton Catholic? I think it has an online program. 

[mamakelly]

I’ve used it for various grades and kids during elementary and middle school. We only used Spelling, English, Cursive and occasionally Math. It filled in the gaps when I was overwhelmed.

what about looking at Veritas Self Paced? My 5th grader is using it this year and absolutely love loves it. 

[DawnM]

I am Protestant and I wouldn't use their curriculum.  There are things BJ stands for that I cannot support, and that support includes monetary.  

My friends who are Independent Fundamental Baptist (that is what BJ is) love it, it is a spiral approach to learning, which I do like.  

BJ doesn't just hate on other religions, he hates on anyone who doesn't believe EXACTLY the way he does.  

[Violet Crown]

On 1/7/2019 at 1:47 PM, Meadowlark said:

Obviously, I can't ask this there so I'm asking here. Their worldview is biblical Christian-evangelical Christian and Protestant. I know that. I also know that I would see the most conflict in the subjects of science and history. But here's the thing, it's science and history that I want to outsource. Without going through every video, I can't possibly know if it slams Catholicism or if it leans way one way or another. I love that it is Christian and incorporates God in the studies. No problem there at all.

I've only used their French textbook, which I think is very good... but yes, it's explicitly anti-Catholic. However that's limited to the "French Culture" sections, and I use those in reverse to explain a subset of American culture to my kids. And they know what "On va distribuer des traités" means, which I guess is something.

So for what that's worth. I'd expect much more of that in their history curriculum, and any history of science in their science curriculum. I wouldn't use the former, and not being a Creationist (in its American Christian meaning), wouldn't use the latter, either.

How about TOPS science? We love it.

[TechWife]

13 hours ago, Patty Joanna said:

I loved this article by Susan Wise Bauer.   https://welltrainedmind.com/a/a-neutral-education/

This is a marvelous article - thanks for sharing!

[Ellie]

On 1/7/2019 at 2:39 PM, mom2att said:

I'd run far away from BJU if I were you. I find their materials way too rigid and dogmatic--and I'm an evangelical protestant. My son did an outsourced class using their Earth Science textbook in 8th grade. We made it through the first quarter before dropping the class, despite losing out on the almost $400 we had paid. I could not spend one more day in that textbook.

And see, if I had to choose between ABeka and BJUP, I'd choose BJUP every time, because IMHO ABeka is way more rigid and dogmatic.

My dd did BJUP's 10th grade biology with a small group of homeschoolers and a tutor, and they loved it.