Sunday, August 16, 2009

I Could Not Believe My Eyes: Abeka Vs. Native Americans

I found an Abeka textbook, Our American Heritage (1983 edition), on clearance at a local homeschooling bookstore. For $2.00, I thought I could satisfy my curiosity about the religious content of Abeka's history books, and maybe even use some of the biographical content during our study of America's history. I figured I could always just toss out the religious references.

But no.

"When the Indians came, the people of Boonesboro were ready. They fought the Indians bravely for ten days.

[Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. For the Lord shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken.--Proverbs 3:25-26]

The Indians would not give up. They began to set the fort on fire. When all seemed lost, God sent a rainstorm. The rain drenched the flames and the Indians, too! The flames went out, and the Indians stole back into the forest. How the people of Boonesboro rejoiced!"



How, you may ask, can they be sure that God specifically sent the rain at that precise moment to run off the Indians? It's simple! According to their website,

"Our skilled researchers and writers do not paraphrase progressive education textbooks and add Biblical principles; they do primary research in every
subject and look at the subject from God’s point of view."



After reading that, I simply had to poke around on their site to see what they had to say about history. There, in bold letters, is this statement:


Students need a realistic view of history, government, geography, and economics based upon the foundational truths of the Scriptures.



I don't know about you, but I smell an oxymoron.

8 comments:

Dave Johnson said...

This is the kind of stuff that drove us away from church and christianity for good. It's literally impossible to raise children who think logically and truthfully in an environment where something like that last quote (the bolded one) is considered good and right.

Just found this blog btw. I'm an ex-pastor who starts project based homeschooling next week with my 4 and 7 year old boys. I'm terrified.

Bleu said...

Thank you for stopping by, Dave, and thank you for this comment.

There were so many things that drove me away church and christianity, I could probably start a blog on that alone. :D

I was terrified when we started homeschooling, too. At that time, my girls were 5 and 7, and my son was 4. That was almost six years ago, and sometimes I'm still terrified.

Anonymous said...

As Bill Maher says in his documentary Religulous, "Sometimes, it just rains."

Bleu said...

That is one of my favorite movies! Thank you for visiting me; I'm so glad I found you via the Carnival. :)

Anonymous said...

How brave of you, Bleu :)

I think it's also an Abeka American History text that asks, "What was the greatest gift that the Pilgrims gave to the Indians?" Shame on me for "smallpox" immediately springing to mind; the correct answer was "Christianity."

Bleu said...

I like the not-so-subtle way that bible verse is thrown in between the paragraphs, implying the Native Americans were wicked.


I've been biting my tongue over at your blog post...not over your post, but over one of the commenters. I wanted to call him out on his explanation about the "intellegence" in his url, but I don't want to seem petty. So I'll just tell you here...I did some poking around and found a thread where someone corrected him, and he said it was because he was a product of the New York school system. No mention of sarcasm or Darwinists not being able to take a joke. I guess he was just feeling a little defensive and trying to save face.

kelli said...

I am so glad I followed the Twitter link and found your blog. So much of it is right in line with my world view! I avoid Christian curriculum because of things like this. I'm sure some of it is fine, but I just never know!

Demoraelynde said...

I am so thrilled to find this blog! I had a similar experience recently. I bought some science textbooks at a garage sale and didn't check them. As my daughter and I started reading, I thought I could still use the basic lessons. Boy, was I wrong. Everything is so biased agains learning. It tells that the scientific method is used to "try" to explain away the "truths" that God created and handles everything. Now I have a set of textbooks to rid myself of.