i was homeschooled from pre-preschool through 12th grade. my christian parents wanted to homeschool me to a) not expose me to atheist and sinful views like evolution and b) to prevent me from being bullied (spoilers: did not work). all of my homeschool curriculum was religious. i don't think i knew until i was an adult that there were people who homeschooled their kids who weren't christian. i grew up using a lot of abeka curriculum, as well as BJU (bob jones university) curriculum and other assorted curriculums. i grew up in a fundamentalist church heavily influenced by the teaching of john macarthur, a racist calvinist who pushed "the statement on social justice and the gospel," a reactionary anti-"sjw" manifesto many in the church were pressured to or willingly signed. i'm not even sure how to describe the debacle around this manifesto but maybe someday i'll write another post on it. it happened i believe when i was in high school and it caused A Lot of discourse even within the very homogenous church i grew up in. for some more background, not only did i grow up within calvinist christian fundamentalism, i grew up being a closeted queer kid and not knowing i was autistic until i was an adult. both of these factors, even though i was homeschooled, led to constant bullying and ostracization from my peers and the adults around me. i was threatened with being kicked out of the church for, i kid you not, choosing to not suck up to the pedo youth pastor.
abeka is based around the pensacola christian school and pensacola christian college in pensacola, florida. famous for being the college where students under 21 are not allowed to go on dates or hang out with members of "the opposite sex" without a chaperone and where women are made to wear modest skirts and dresses and keep their hair long (and there are separate "mens" and "womens" beaches), abeka is the leader in christian homeschooling curriculum. within their offerings are video lessons recorded from irl classes at PCS in which homeschool students can learn asynchronously and have a parent or guardian grade their work.
unfortunately bju does not stand for Blow Job university. bju is a christian fundamentalist university in greenville, south carolina. BJU press publishes a full curriculum program for k-12 and is essentially the direct competitor of abeka. BJU banned interracial dating between students until 2000, and only admitted Black students in 1971, although they faced numerous lawsuits over the next several decades due to institutional racial discrimination. i won't be delving into the university itself nor its numerous controversies in this post; rather i want to discuss BJU press and their homeschool curriculum, specifically their history and science curriculum. unsurprisingly, BJU's curriculum is chock full of white christian nationalist propaganda and littered with "biblical" ideology throughout. i want to draw your attention to the fact that their history curriculum is not called "history;" rather, it's called "heritage studies." below are some excerpts from their "heritage" studies textbooks.
excerpt from BJU press heritage studies 1st grade textbook (3) detailing the biblical story of creation, because where else would a christian homeschooled child learn about it, sunday school/their parents?
excerpt from BJU press heritage studies 2nd grade textbook (3)
excerpt from BJU press heritage studies 4th grade textbook (3) detailing creation and the fall of man and the exact location of the tower of babel?
excerpt from BJU press heritage studies 5th grade textbook (3) detailing how humans got to north america
excerpt from BJU press heritage studies 5th grade textbook (3) mentioning something called the "Creation mandate" ???
excerpt from BJU press heritage studies 5th grade textbook (3) detailing their view on american christian missionaries colonizing and collecting power, as well as mentioning social darwinism although i can't tell from this excerpt what their take on that is because it seems that they're for it as it seems they're using it as a justification for colonization and over-involvement in foreign affairs but what do i know