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Cake day: July 12th, 2023

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  • I grew up homeschooled for my entire K-12 experience through the 2000s and 2010s and went to my fair share of homeschool conventions throughout it. (They’re really popular and they always have separate events for the kids.)

    There’s no governing body for any of these curriculum. My science education would always change depending on the book. At one point, I was told that all the animals in the world were vegetarian before Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil then turned carnivorous. Another series of videos I received spent a literal hour and a half “dunking” on evolution before actually giving a much more valid argument for its existence. (I actually am trying to find a way to convert the crappy flash swf files into video so I can share the insanity if anyone knows how to do that. FFmpeg hath failed me.)

    Math was less volatile but had its quirks. I had one curriculum (Life of Fred) that quite literally was made with crappy clipart and not really even written by a person who was qualified to make kids content. It was just purposely obtuse and my mother took me off of it once I wasn’t making any progress on it. I made it through two of those books for what it’s worth.

    Economics and “stewardship” was also high-key Republican trickle down economics and one time they actually blamed social programs for causing the Great Depression.

    But, all that said, I got a super advanced education that put me well ahead of most other kids my age and I’m only listing the worst aspects of Christian homeschool curricula. Generally, homeschooling (Christian or secular) is almost entirely dependent on the parent actually giving a crap about their kid’s unique needs and strengths. At the very least, if you’re going to homeschool (no, I don’t mean charter school) your kid for an extended period, make sure that you’re involved with activities with other kids and that you really look through what your kid is reading.