As many of you know already, I started my journey homeschooling my own kids with My Father's World curriculum. As those of you who have been using MFW since 2020 and before probably also know, MFW used to promote and sell Apologia sciences for middle and high school. And those of you who have a middle or high schooler now very likely have noticed that MFW has shifted to promoting and selling Berean Builders science instead now.
Actually, both science companies were founded by the same person.
Apparently Jay Wile founded Apologia and then sold it around 2010 to another homeschooling family but continued to work in the company. Then something happened and Wile left Apologia because he didn't want his name associated with them anymore. Apologia has since been going through rewriting/replacing all the textbooks Jay Wile wrote for the company.
As they have replaced Wile's books, MFW's loyalty has apparently followed Wile to his newer(?) company, Berean Builders, and so as Apologia has replaced Wile's textbooks with newly rewritten versions by other authors, it seems MFW has replaced those replacements with whatever Berean Builders has in stock for the same grade. If you're only here to hear my opinions on Apologia/Berean, feel free to skip the next couple paragraphs regarding my philosophy on teaching Science and resume reading where it says [1] for my/kids' experience using Apologia or where it says [2] for my opinions on what I saw as red flags. [3] is where I mention the reason I don't trust Apologia spiritually and won't use it anymore. [4] is where I begin on why I can't trust/support Berean either.
Back in the early years of my homeschool career, I didn't pay much attention to the science from the textbooks that came in the MFW cycle years. To be frank, we live rural enough that we see and experience so much science in the natural world that textbooks generally seem boring and redundant. My dad taught me science in the early and middle grades by taking advantage of teaching moments and always being willing to answer my questions thoroughly. I learned more from him than I ever retained from textbook. So I sort of developed the philosophy that before jr. high, science is best seen, heard, felt, tasted, and experienced. We keep a large variety of sciencey pictoral informational books (like Usborne style) around and buy lots of educational STEAM toy kits and supplies. They watch the mantis egg cases until the babies come out, they see tadpoles grow legs, bring me caterpillars so we can look up what butterfly or moth they will be, and watch the birds mate, build nests, lay eggs, hatch, and leave. Last winter they would come in from sledding and draw me all the animal tracks they had seen and if I didn't already know, we would look them up. Last week my 12 year old had a collection of young grasshoppers in an old tic tac container and was observing them for a while. He made many verbal observations about their body structure and exoskeleton. We've learned so much about spiders in the past 4 years that now when we see a jumping spider we all recognize it as a jumper immediately and none of us hesitate to take it to a safe place just because we know so much about them now that the fear is gone. And also we know and recognize the spiders and other arachnids in our area with enough strength and venom potency to do harm and how to safely deal with those. We have a mama deer who lives in our small piece of forest and has twin fawns every year. Well she just brought out this year's babies for the first time the other day and there are 3 of them this year! We look forward to watching them grow, as well as the family of quail that hatches over a dozen little floofs every year. I do NOT ever look forward to the Northern Flicker pair that nests nearby and tries to drill holes in my roof in the wee hours of the morning when I'm trying to sleep. My 10 year old is raising a cucumber plant for fun. My kids use old primary scissors to cut tunnels in the grass to play in and make many observations about the plants and bugs in the underlayers. We saw our first June Bug of the year last weekend. Everyone wanted to photograph it because it had a sparkly copper colored shell and they knew it wasn't a Ten Lined June Bug and wanted to know what kind of June Bug it was. Commentary was made on the barbs on its legs. Wonder was expressed about why it didn't have feathery antennae. Things were added to our list of what to look up. When smoke from the wildfires and lightning from the heat wave drove us indoors, my kids build models with complicated moving parts, and we discussed why yeast and baking soda will make food rise when we're cooking, and read about lightning. Every time there's something cool to see in space, my husband gets out his telescope and take the older kids out after dark to stargaze.
All this to say my kids are absolutely steeped in science, but I don't really like the idea of using science textbooks before 7th grade. It's not a conclusion/opinion I arrived at all at once, but it's the one I hold now.
[1] My 13 year old son is absolutely genius at figuring out how things work and building complicated machines, but he's not good at spelling and doesn't enjoy the language arts. I made the mistake, back when he was in 5th-ish grade and his older sister in 7th-ish, of thinking that since everything in the MFW selections up until then had been gentle and adaptable to various ages, that I could and even ought to have these oldest 2 do the Apologia General Science (Apologia says it's for 7th grade) together. I knew zilch about Apologia so when it came, it was a shock how heavy the content was. Tons and tons of reading for my not so reading friendly son. My husband was trying to teach it and decided maybe the Student Notebooks were necessary. Even still, my son read and wrote so slowly that it would take at least 5-8 hours a week to do science and that's skipping all the fluff and condensing as much as possible. They got good grades, but it was a very hard year of science for both kids. My oldest could keep up fine but she was miserable reading these boring endless pages and then trying to remember all these answers she wasn't interested in at all. We figured she'd be fine if she didn't have to wait on her struggling brother... she could go faster and it wouldn't be as boring.
So the next year I didn't make them do science together. The experience with the Apologia middle school texts had made me start to second-guess my interest-led unschool-y approach to early grade science. I wanted to have him go back to just doing that with the youngers because I had felt like he was learning so much and really loving, understanding, and retaining it... but my insecurities got the better of me and I had him do the science from the ET1850 package. The AIG animal science went well - he did it himself without complaint - but that Apologia botany was like pulling teeth. Apologia style is not a good fit for this child at all.
Meanwhile my oldest progressed on to Apologia Physical Science (for 8th grade) alone, and this time she was miserable all year on her own. She was so miserable she started goofing off and not doing it. She would just circle the answer in the question and refuse to write anything. On the days I was checking in, she would do well, but I can't check in on every subject every day for every child and it started slipping through the cracks because if I wasn't hovering, she gave exactly 0% effort. Time and time again I would catch her and there would be consequences and she'd have to do extra to catch up. She loathed it. She failed it. We made her repeat it. It was misery for everyone. "Like pulling teeth" I said about the botany with her younger brother, and that applied to getting through the Physical Sci with my firstborn too. In general she's an extremely honest, diligent, and reliable person. This science really brought out her dark side.
And so I felt this dread... if science is so hard in middle school, how are we going to survive high school?!
[2] Meanwhile, all these little red flags kept popping up. Just a sentence here or there in the Apologia books that didn't sit right. At first I dismissed them because they weren't terribly clear as far as being "off." Just a nagging, "why is it worded like that?" feeling. The only specific one that comes to mind at the moment was something that eluded to there being an upcoming lesson in a future grade on Global Warming and the way it was worded made it sound like it was about to spout the alarmist talking points instead of a balanced and Biblical position. Nothing solid, but it didn't explain clearly what was meant and so it left me uneasy.
Now, neither of these middle school science texts were written by Jay Wile. They were Apologia all the way. But during my family's struggles with those, someone shared a PDF in which Jay Wile listed many things he found strange, erroneous, confusing, or just plain didn't like in one of the Apologia texts that replaced his. As I read it, I was concerned about the points he was making, but I was also catching a petty, stuck-up undertone and didn't know if I was imagining it. I asked my husband to read it and he couldn't decided if Wile was just really agitated about the errors or was actually being kind of arrogant. I informed my husband that Wile actually founded Apologia and then sold it and left and started a new science company, and this text he was reviewing was actually replacing his at Apologia. (Can anyone say conflict of interest?) My husband said that in that case, we might NOT be imagining the perceived pettiness. But regardless of his personal motivations and whether I was reading him the right way, some of his points really did concern me about continuing on with Apologia.
During this time I would come across comments on social media like, 'I'm not a fan of Jay Wile. He was super rude/arrogant to me/a family member at a convention.' and 'I don't agree with some of his points of view that he preaches as if they were gospel on his blog.' I filed that away to look into later. I noticed that MFW was changing everything 7th grade and up to Berean Builders where it used to be Apologia, so that would have solved it if it was only Apologia I was struggling with, but I was having hesitation on BOTH Wile and Apologia. And that's about the time I decided to try looking up WHY he sold and later left Apologia in the first place. It was over a decade ago though, so digging up anything solid on it doesn't turn up a concise answer. Basically just a cryptic blog post by Wile on the matter that felt to me like it was strategically worded to be blamey without outright blaming.
I'm a busy lady. I didn't have time to keep digging right then. I had other stuff to do. Why he left a decade ago probably wouldn't affect my curriculum decisions now anyway. Right? It was probably personal stuff and it's been a decade so if it was something that bad, it probably wouldn't have been that hard to dig up. Since nothing solid came up right away, maybe it's really nothing.
I went to Apologia's site to buy the next year's science for my soon to be 9th grader. Alas they were moving to a new warehouse. I didn't want to order and take a chance my order would get lost in the move. I'll wait, I thought, until they're moved. Okay to be completely honest, a part of me breathed a sigh of relief that my decision was postponed. Something really didn't feel right to me about Apologia and now to add to the weight holding me back, I kept seeing comments on social media saying things like, "In my state we have to show our curriculum to a teacher for approval and the teacher looked through the Apologia and said that the middle school ones are like high school level/that the high school ones are like college level." The first time or two I barely registered it, like somewhere in the back of my mind I probably kind of went, "yeah homeschoolers are generally ahead of public schoolers in the same grade" and went on with my life, but the third time I stumbled on just such a comment, I actually stopped and thought, "Hmmm. Maybe it's not that we are science failures. Maybe it's just plain that they really are THAT hard!"
That really tweaked my feeling of frustration over WHY science has got to be so stinking hard! My oldest isn't even college bound, let alone a STEM field. Why does she HAVE to take this advanced, heavy, difficult science that she hates? And my son who probably will wind up in a STEM field? He isn't ready for this level of dry textbookish heavy-workload yet. Not even close.
[3] Well then they were moved to the new warehouse apparently, but there was an advertisement on their home page for a Health curriculum. I was in the market for some electives for my oldest and clicked on it to see what grade it was for. I saw no grade on it but there was a sample and I read it.
Red flags galore. Now I'm not worried about her reading about reproduction in a schoolbook, we've already covered that, so that's not the problem. The problem was the pagan personality typing that they drilled on and on and on throughout the lengthy sample as if it were straight out of the Holy Bible. Not just a brief, 'this is what they used to believe about personalities...' thing but extensive personality typing of the student and people they know, like they're actually studying it as if it were truly based in legitimate science. I would have hardly been more surprised if they'd gone into astrology or the enneagram from there. It disturbed me that this was in a book from a company I had been trusting to teach my kid apologetics. And that was the big dealbreaker for me. Especially since I have lost several family members to a "Christian" cult that incorporates new-age and ancient-spiritualism beliefs and practices into "Christianity." After something like that happens to your family, anything that smells faintly of that sort of thing is something you hope and pray your kids flee from with all their might. NOT something you buy textbooks for and teach to them as fact. I showed it to my husband and we agreed; no more Apologia for us.
[4] So where did that leave us for science? I figured Berean would be similar on the heavy textbooky overkill for a non-college-bound -student front, branches off the same tree and all that, even if there were some theology discrepancies. Plus I kept seeing people say things about him having a bad personality (not in and of itself a dealbreaker by any means) and that he would defend v xx in es as if they were manna from heaven, that he didn't think it relevant that ab or tio ns were involved in the development of those (dealbreakers for sure). Commenters said that the topic had been coming up a lot on his blog lately since a certain v ir us. When I finally got into the research about Wile, I ultimately wrote off Berean as not for my family too.
If you're curious, we are trying MasterBooks this year. My oldest is on her 3rd week of the Biology and spontaneously talks about what she learned about genetics... and the first week she was serving dinner and made a model water molecule out of biscuits. She has never before shown that much interest in any science that didn't have to do with a cute baby animal. My second is on his 2nd week of the General Science 1 and even he has already had to come tell me about some factoids he learned from his new science books. I don't know about everything in the books yet but the section I read about Cli mate chan ge in General Science 1 was very balanced! Neither "We're killing the plan et! We're all gonna DIE! We must decrease the population and eliminate cow farts or we're all DOOMED!" nor was it "We can trash everything and the world still won't end one minute sooner than it would have. It's all a hoax anyway!" but an actual honest to goodness balanced and scientific view, so I was impressed with that.
So now down to the references, because I'm sure you want to see for yourself and make your own decision.
->The Apologia Health, the sample for which moved them permanently to the "nope" list for my family.
->A post on Wile's personal blog about why he left Apologia. I agree with "Involved Homeschool Dad" in the comments and don't like the way Wile replies to him as if it's IHD's mistake that causes the disagreement rather than respecting the difference of opinion.
A quote from Wile from one of his comments on his blog post: "...the really troubling aspect of the Apologia worldview curriculum is that based on what it says, the vast majority of evangelicals do not have a Biblical worldview. As I read the text, in order to have a Biblical worldview, you have to be a young-earth Calvinist. There is never any point at which the texts I have read (one that is already published and one in manuscript form) actually say that directly, but if you compile all the things the texts say about what a Christian is supposed to believe, that’s what I come up with."
Um... If he's alternately arguing that all viewpoints are equal/all roads lead to heaven, isn't that universalism or perennialism? Which is not a good thing. I can respect a person with a POV different than mine who truly believes they are right and has reasons, but I can't respect someone who thinks everything is the same and it doesn't matter if you believe the (whole) Bible or not.
->I obviously don't agree with the content of *this site, but I find their reaction to and comments on Wile's departure from Apologia interesting. I find the quote "...I'm wondering whether Dr. Wile's apparent increased open-mindedness has deeper roots than his textbooks would suggest." to be very unsettling considering both the source and the usual direction intended by the phrase "open minded."
*Apparently the blog has been removed as of 1/28/23. It was called Old Earth Creationism - I cannot agree with theistic evolution in any way, shape, or form but found the article interesting in reference to Jay Wile's beliefs and possible wishy-washiness regarding a Young Earth stance, as implied by a blogger on the other side.
->This link is sort of round-about relevant as it mentions the Wile/Enns thing from the previous article, as well as a warning about a book from a publisher from which My Father's World uses other materials. (The publisher of Story of the World and the Writing With Skill which MFW schedules for 7th/8th grade.)
->This link refutes some disturbing behavior by Wile toward Ken Ham. Apparently Wile doesn't believe that the Bible in any way says that there wasn't (animal) death in/before Eden and seems to me to imply theistic evolution is a valid and non-critical difference in acceptable Christian worldviews despite it being contradictory to the Bible. Wile does sound very arrogant and also misled. I definitely do NOT want him teaching my children.
->And last but most certainly not least, a link to one of the pro-v__ posts on Wile's personal blog. He doesn't seem to appreciate that there are other interpretations for the data besides his own. Over and over as I've been digging in preparation for this post I see him as dismissing anyone who disagrees with him with what I am reading as a condescending attitude of the dissenter or their source having obviously lied, misinterpreted, or been too mentally or educationally inferior to really comprehend all the reasons why Wile is always right. Before today's research I was fairly ambivalent about him (not wanting to use his products, but mostly ambivalent about the person) but the more of his posts and comments I read, the more he leaves quite a bad flavor.
One commenter asks how Christians can in good conscience take the new v__s. Wile replies basically that since "the" aborted baby which the cell lines are from was dead over 50 years ago now, its murder doesn't matter anymore if we can use its parts to save people. Not just a horrific thing to think and say, but also this is 'only one' business and ignorantly saying that the research has not contributed to the death of any others is unscientific and a commonly believed piece of misinformation. Here it is from the medical industry on a government website, from a lot more recently than 50 years ago. Try less than a decade. There are more links to articles on the government website about this here. A cell line cannot survive 50 years. They must (and do) continue to acquire new cell lines because cell lines deteriorate. They run out, they deteriorate, and it's scientifically impossible for all the v__s in the world to have been developed from one cell line from a 50 year old murder. I mean just think about what a frozen steak looks like after a couple years in the freezer... how is a cell line that they keep taking out to use bits of going to stay undeteriorated and un-used-up for half a century? It's not. And in dismissing the obvious fact that it's not just one and it can't last forever, he's completely ignoring supply and demand: if people willingly use v__s developed from fetal cells, then the companies making them have 0 incentive to develop them without that ingredient. Supply and demand... also known as contributing to more trafficking in murdered-human cells.
Wile goes on to quote some Catholics whom Wile seems to think are authorities on the subject, who declare that there is no moral problem with using these v__s / that the good outweighs the evil so it's fine. Well if a Catholic says it, it must be true. I mean, the Pope... no, let's just not go there today. *weary* Seriously, it's just as foolish to believe someone is spiritually correct and speaking truth simply because they are a member of a certain religion or denomination as it is to believe someone is morally correct and speaking truth simply because they identify with a certain political party. Foolish. I said what I said.
And on that note, I'm gonna keep comments off for this one.
