I can’t say how other people teach anything. I can say my children know more about Darwin than most kids their age and not in a “what a horrible man” kind of way. I personally believe that isolating a child from theories and opinions, especially those they are almost guaranteed to eventually confront, makes it difficult for them to really defend their beliefs or to discuss these issues intelligently.

I am curious to know what they do call it. Evolution by means of natural selection is the predominant scientific theory. In fact, the statistics that you supplied are interesting, they are even more interesting when compared to the statistics for experts in the field of biology where fewer than one percent of relevant scientists gave credence to creationism. Logic dictates that we must defer to an expert in certain fields.

There is strong evidence to support it and while I would never criticize anyone’s child-raising (I don’t have any yet myself, so how would I know?), I am bursting with curiosity about how these theories are taught, along with whether or not they stress the scientific definition of the word “theory.”

I do apologize. I’m getting way off topic. The basic premise of your post has little to do with evolution directly (and I must reiterate, that I do agree with that basic premise) and I hope you don’t think that I’m grinding an axe because I really am curious.

Not all of my homeschooled friends are Christian, either, I’d just like to point out.

However, I do think it’s important that people be able to make their own decisions on the matter. Any parent that deliberately shields their children from evolutionary theory (of which I am a firm supporter) is committing something akin to a crime.

So, it seems to me that even Christian parents who homeschool should expose their children to evolutionary theory. They should be educated in the basic mechanisms that drive it (allele frequencies, convergent and divergent evolution, sexual selection, mutation, etc).

It’s the only way that, as adults, children will be able to make educated decisions about it.

Otherwise, you run the risk of alienating your kids completely if they do decide to rebel against their upbringing. My parents are highly conservative creationists and I have a fantastic relationship with them. And I firmly believe that this is because they support me and my beliefs (even if they don’t agree). The biggest crime is alienation, not teaching children evolution.

As for public schools being terrible, I wholeheartedly agree with all of your indictments. It doesn’t do what it ought, and No Child Left Behind is a sham and a joke.

You know, folks whose own educational experiences didn’t equip them well for life, living on the margins with unreliable income and sort of hanging on by a thread and resenting that everything’s so difficult and full of red tape, with other social service problems and needs (free health clinics, food banks etc) and weren’t very skilled at managing or negotiating all their um, shall we say interfaces?

So pushed out but they weren’t “pushy” as in demanding PTA parents or whatever . . .

I take your point that the “push” reasons point to parents who homeschool as a reaction to, and attempt to manipulate, the public school system. Those folks are what I would call “education protestors.”

They want a subsidized daycare system that costs them only $300 a year (in residential property taxes) for 180 days of relief, and guarantees plenty of socialization and sports for their kid. If the current system disappeared, they would build another one just like it.