This is all irrelevant – in terms of why people homeschool, I think you oversimplify why people choose to do it.

You seem quite sensitive about your credentials, hence the quick pulling out of the “I’m an engineer” card, quickly followed by the tirade on how some people who homeschool perhaps do it for religious reasons, followed by a long rant about how this is anti-science, to a very unnecessary defense of scientific hypothesis. It wasn’t under attack, and I don’t think that even parents who do choose to take their children from school because of the issue you talk about do it because they are again the scientific method.

The reality of homescooling is that it is done for one of many reasons – family lives abroad, low-quality education provided by public schools, limited courses to choose from, low standards of STEM subjects, safety issues, moral issues, and certainly perhaps for parents to ensure their children receive the Jewish/Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/Atheist/etc guidance that they judge to have value.

You seem to take issue with this last possibility, and generalize the entire group based on this possibility, namely that they must be anti-science because they might believe in a god. I think that children homeschooled correctly can enjoy more opportunities to understand and love science and gain critical thinking than in public schooling.

And it need not conflict with their culture, values and personal faith.

I’m late to post here but have done so in honor of President Park Geun-hye’s recent edict that beginning in 2017 South Korean schoolchildren will be taught history from textbooks created by the state. It’s these little kinds of controls and authoritarian decisions that led me to spend my post-tax cash on private education for my kids. I was interested in home schooling them entirely but that job would have fallen to my wife and she felt unable to do the job properly.

Why did you even have kids?

There’s a difference between microevolution and macroevolution. Creationists deny the latter not the former. The only difference between creationist flavor of evolution and the evolution I learned in public school is that creationists are willing to admit their explanation for origins is based on belief; they were not around to observe the process; whereas, those who subscribe to uniformitarianism, will not admit that no one can affirm as truth that millions of years is the explanation because no one is around to observe said millions of years. Assumption and speculation, no matter how much it’s been peer-reviewed, is still belief. You literally can’t apply the scientific method to uniformitarianism.

It’s legal to homeschool if at least one of the parents is not Korean.

Thank you코알라 for your responses in this topic!

As an atheist homeschooling mom who knows a huge number of other homeschoolers who are not doing to keep their kids from learning things but to open up the world for them so they can learn more and think critically.

Not all homeschoolers do it for religious reasons.

Thank you!

In addition, since you recommended something for me to watch, I’d like to recommend something for you. I have spent a lot of time over the past 5ish years researching this topic (prior to that, although I knew evolution was true, I was a christian who believed it was all caused by a god and I tended to avoid watching things that might cause me to have cognitive dissonance, so I avoided a lot of videos from atheists). Most of my research does come from youtube, but some is from classes I’ve taken and looking into peer reviewed studies and such. But when I get bored one of the things I like to look up is creationist videos, creationists trying to debunk evolution videos, and people debunking creationist videos (often “people debunking creationist arguments against evolution” videos). It’s right up there with my searches about psychic fraud (a really interesting topic to me because back in pre-youtube days I believed psychics were real). One of the first series I got into was the “why people laugh at creationists” series. It can be a little hard to stomach since you are religious but if you really want to know why creationist arguments or “proof” are not actually true, it’s a good place to start. Some of the videos aren’t necessarily about creation arguments but rather arguments that some creationists make about other things that conflict with science, such as believing in a world wide flood. I went through them quickly just now and I think the first one that actually has to do with creation vs evolution is part 7 (part 7 isn’t that great though, part 8 is better, and part 10 is good for explaining how the earth wasn’t “fine tuned for life”). Before that it is mostly about the flood. The whole playlist is here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAC3481305829426D

I’m not sure exactly how your beliefs align so obviously if you start watching one and find that you don’t actually agree with what the creationist is saying, then it doesn’t apply to you. I think most of the people in the video are biblical literalists/young earth creationists.

(part 15 is also really good, there’s a lot of videos and it’s been so long since I watched this series)

“I had a feeling that you might be confused about the difference between genetic mutation and evolution.”

Please come back to me when you actually understand what evolution is. Genetic mutation and environmental adaptations are what drive evolution. You cannot have one without the other. Evolution is not some magical thing causing one species to instantly turn into another. It is a very long process of little changes over time (sometimes the changes occur quickly, but usually they don’t). The reasons that changes stick and don’t die out just because the first ones to carry the change died is the same reason why you have your hair color and eye color. You’re the offspring of your parents, who are the offspring of their parents, etc. Because creatures breed, then it doesn’t matter if their ancestors are dead. The slight change in DNA, if it is something that allows for better survivability, will carry on through offspring until it either dies off or becomes dominant.

I think you are just confused by how this world started. Evolution is not about the very first organism to sustain life on Earth. It explain how species diverge and change over time to come to what we know today. You cannot discount all of evolution by saying “but I don’t understand how a single-celled organism changed to become a giraffe” because you first have to accept that giraffes have common ancestors with other creatures that may look nothing at all like giraffes. It is easier to understand if you look at charts showing common ancestors from different species.

Here’s an example with human ancestors: http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/anth1602/images/Lewis_0609_800.jpg

It doesn’t have pictures but you can read the names. It clearly shows have we have diverged from other primates, which ones we’re most closely related to, etc. DNA evidence, fossil records, and other factors all prove this is true. It’s amazing to realize that the same creature that resulted in humans also resulted in gorillas and to examine the differences to determine what caused us to diverge differently. It was likely due to human’s direct ancestors migrating to different parts of the world compared to gorilla’s direct ancestors, and having different genetics be more likely to survive in these new areas, causing different genetics to become more dominant in the group. Then, given enough time, we have the gorillas and humans as we know them today.

“I’m not forcing you, or your children, to be exposed to any ideas you’re opposed to.”

You are advocating to “teach the controversy.” Religion has no place in public schools.

“I’m choosing to teach my kids about both sides of the debate”

You are doing a disservice to your children, because there is no actual debate. I hope you tell them that one side is backed by the vast majority of scientists, and the other side is backed by your religion. If you are presenting them as equal ideas and telling your children that a scientific theory is a scientist’s best guess, then you are teaching them a lie.

“I’d be happy to see that happen in public schools as well, but, once again, I’m not forcing that, either.”

You in particular may not be, but people who follow your religion are trying to. The fact that you’d be happy for one religion to be taught in a science classroom is bad enough. You live in America which is a secular country and yet you’d be fine with religious propaganda being taught along with science in publicly funded schools. You already have shown you don’t view public schools highly and even with that you’d be fine with them choosing to teach something that has no evidence at all and making our kids less intelligent, especially compared to children in other countries, for the sake of your religion.

I understand if you don’t want to reply again. I didn’t even want to make my first reply to you because this really isn’t the place for this discussion. But I’m not one to let poor arguments slide. Since you home school your kids, you would be doing a great service to them if you actually bothered to learn about evolution. If you want to teach them about creation, you could do so in a religious setting, but to teach it alongside evolution (supposedly) as if there is some sort of actual controversy within the scientific community, especially when you show that you do not actually understand evolution, is wrong.