Curriculum

AP: Bible-Influenced Science Texts Top Home-School Market

By Erik W. Robelen — March 08, 2010 1 min read
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Leading textbooks for home-schoolers offer a view of science influenced by the Bible, reports an Associated Press story, with some science educators saying two of the best-selling biology books “stack the deck against evolution.”

The textbook publishers defend their books as “well-rounded lessons on evolution and its shortcomings,” the story says.

The AP story finds that “Christian-based materials dominate a growing home-school education market” that includes more than 1.5 million U.S. students.

One biology textbook published by Bob Jones University Press doesn’t mask its “disdain for Darwin and evolutionary science,” the AP says.

“Those who do not believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God will find many points in this book puzzling,” the AP quotes the introduction to Biology: Third Edition as saying. “This book was not written for them.”

The size of the textbook business for home-schoolers isn’t clear, the story says, but a spokesman for the Home School Legal Defense Association estimated that sales of home-school materials reach about $1 billion each year.

“The majority of home-schoolers self-identify as evangelical Christians,” the spokesman told the AP. “Most home-schools will definitely have a sort of creationist component to their home-school program.”

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Curriculum Matters blog.