Homeschool Curriculum Update: Why I’m Tossing the (not so) Good and The Beautiful
If you’re in the middle of the school year and figure out something’s not working with your curriculum, throw it away! Just kidding. But actually, that’s what I decided to do in this case.
Read on to find out about what we’re throwing out and what we’re going to do instead.
Or if you prefer to watch, click the video above. However, I share more details as to why we are throwing out The Good & The Beautiful in this blog post so keep reading..,
When we began our school year, we didn’t buy a lot of curriculum, but started with what we had to get a good idea of what would still work and what we still needed.
While most of my original choices as previously shared in the Homeschool Curriculum Picks post were a good fit, we ran into some snags with my youngest son’s curriculum.
We had been using The Good and the Beautiful for language arts and math the previous year, and while he didn’t really enjoy it because of all the wordiness which meant lengthy preliminaries before finally getting on with the lesson’s activities, we were dealing with it by skipping over most everything except the review pages in math and skimming through and hitting the highlights in language arts. Though that was a much better flow than the math curriculum, so we were doing most of the lessons.
Then I started noticing some questionable symbols and references. And while I’m not going to go into detail about that here, I will say that once I started noticing these non-Christian symbols, it was interesting how often they showed up.
Sidenote: I’m referring to the latest version of the curriculum. The older versions of the curriculum seem to be “clean,” so perhaps there has been a gradual shift in this direction which is now becoming evident.
I started thinking about if it is even wise to use a “multi-denominational” curriculum founded by someone who is from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), aka Mormon, in the first place. (see last paragraph on linked page).
Marketed as faith-based but not sharing doctrine from any specific religion sounds like a good, safe option, right?!
But herein lies the problem. By removing the doctrine and not stating beliefs upfront…because it’s not supposed to be affiliated with any specific denomination (though as stated on their page it is “multi-denominational” and has people of many religions including LDS, Charismatic, Catholic, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and more working on it, many of which are not considered Christian at all), it makes it tricky to know what they believe.
In fact, if there are no beliefs stated, it is nearly impossible to discern what or when someone’s specific beliefs might show up, because it’s so subtle. Very muddied waters.
Also of note is that according to this ex-mormon, not talking about doctrine is actually a hallmark of the Mormon church. So it seems that this doctrine-less curriculum really just means it’s following the standard LDS practice after all.
Once I shared some of my findings and concerns publicly, others began sharing things they had noticed as well along those same lines. Namely, that the LDS church was founded by Joseph Smith, a freemason. Brigham Young (of BYU fame) was also a freemason. And while masonry fell out of favor with LDS for a time, it is now acceptable for both men and women LDS members to become freemasons. Interestingly, this testimony from an ex-mormon points out the similarities between freemasonry and mormonism.
Which completely fits with the symbolism and messaging I had been noticing in the curriculum.
Now, I have not read the book of Mormon, but have read some of the LDS beliefs, and there are many of concern including that humans can become gods by their good works, Jesus is the result of a relationship between God the Father and god the mother, that they are the only true church, and many other non-biblical, non-Christian ideas. Also, if you go to the LDS page, you’ll find that the beliefs stated are very vanilla. You really won’t find out what they believe other than that they are “Christian” and share many similarities to what other Christians believe. Sound familiar?
I have noticed some LDS quotes in the curriculum, including one by L. Lionel Kendrick who also said, “When Adam and Eve partook of the fruit, they made it possible for all to gain knowledge.”
Sounds like a lie straight from the mouth of Satan…because it is!
And while that was not the quote my son was supposed to do for copywork, I don’t believe it’s safe to study someone who teaches heresies such as this!
In summary, there are so many different possibilities of error being interwoven in from the various religions and worldviews involved in this curriculum (that we may or may not notice because it’s supposed to be safe, neutral, and “Christian”) that I don’t personally feel comfortable using it and risk planting those seeds in my children’s minds as normal and okay. Especially as their characters and beliefs are being formed.
So for now, we are taking a step back and using sort of a unit study approach coupled with a bit of curriculum I had leftover from my older kids. And moving forward, I will most likely get curriculum that is just math or just phonics without other underlying principles mixed in. And leave the doctrine-less doctrine behind.
Edited to add: After posting some of my specific findings in a subsequent video on YouTube (which is no longer public), I received both public and private messages from someone who works at the Good and the Beautiful who adamantly denied any of this, stating that I was being “extreme and looking for evil,” and even said that voodoo practices could be okay if you weren’t doing them in the spirit of evil. Ummm, no!
Sadly, I have since learned that others who have given bad reviews of this curriculum have also received much backlash as well. It’s as though there is some sort of bewitching power here.
This is not a drill, Keepers at Home!!! The enemy is looking to subtly sneak in through any open avenue, including homeschool curriculum. Stay on your guard!
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