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Is there anything in any of these books that conflicts with Catholic beliefs?
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I have been homeschooling for 5 years now, but feel the Lord leading me to a Charlotte Mason Style of homeschooling, and am very excited about it. I would like to purchase this History program, but we are very strong Catholics, and I wondering if this conflicts with our Catholic beliefs, or projects overly negative overtones. I am concerned, most especially , with the presentation of the Reformation period. Are both the Catholic and Protestant views projected and respected, discussing the negatives and positives of both sides, or is it mostly biased towards a Protestant Worldview. There are so many History curricula with strong Protestant bias. I want to avoid these. As my children grow older, I will teach them the differences, but most of our children are very young and impressionable, and I want to focus on the beauty of the Catholic faith and Catholic contributions in History. Please understand, it isn’t necessary that the Catholic faith be glorified in all curricula. I just want to know that our faith won’t be presented in overtly negative language. I know the Church isn’t without her mistakes, but I want them presented unbiased and fairly, in light of the overall Church and not be overtly focused on the sins of a few men, to the detriment of our entire Church. Our Church has amazing men and women who greatly, positively, contributed to both the faith and society. I don’t want a curricula that does any “blaming”. I hope I have expressed myself well, as to my concerns. Again, I just want a fairly neutral curricula, presenting both sides without a bias, or with very little bias, so that I can tweak it to a Catholic worldview. I respect all faiths, but want our children exposed to the beauty of the Catholic faith and not feel I have to defend it to our 5 and 7 year olds, because of negative language in a curriculum. I am open to discussion of truth, and have no problem talking about the problems in the Church in history, but refuse to bash an entire faith, for the sake of the sins of some men in the Church. The laws and principles of Jesus are the foundation, and I don’t want the focus to be on the men of the Church, but I desire their eyes on Christ, and His holy teachings.
If there would just be a couple of “tweaks” to the History or other SCM curricula, I would be fine with it. Then we could just substitute a couple of books, but I don’t want a curriculum that requires too much to substitute. I am also wondering about the Biblical portion of the teachings and recommended books. Is there anything opposing Catholic doctrine, and if so, what, and is it fairly easy to remedy? I don’t want to be on high alert, nervous that we will encounter a negative tone against our Church and our beliefs. We would love to utilize the History and Bible curriculum, but need some reassurance. Also, there are many other resources you are selling that I am considering purchasing. Is there any that conflict with Catholic teaching/doctrine? If so, please advise.
Sorry for the extensive and repetitive post, but I really need solid input, and therefore felt that I required a detailed post. Thank you, so much, in advance!
I have used the SCM history guides, but not being Catholic I don’t know that my perception would be accurate to your family, but I did want to pass on a suggestion to maybe check out http://materamabilis.org/ma/
I have an acquantance that used it and was quite happy with it.
We did Ren and Ref 3 years ago and I remember that things came up so we talked about how even though some leaders acted in certain ways (for example with political decisions towards different groups) that did not mean that everyone agreed. Similar to most things in history.
Hopefully some others will be able to chime in with a more helpful review.
I think the SCM guides use (or used to use – I have the older version, I think) some Louise Vernon books for the Ren/Ref portion of history. We have really enjoyed these books, but we’re not Catholic. I don’t think there was any disrespect to Catholicism in them.
I am Catholic, and have been using materials from SCM for several years now. I am very happy with their materials and overall book choices.
This coming school year we will be studying Middle Ages (including the Reformation). I am putting together a book list of my own and not using the SCM guides – not because I have seen any anti-Catholic sentiment – but because I want to ensure a balanced approach.
I am familiar with Mater Amabilis, and I appreciate their Catholic approach to CM. However, I prefer to keep my children in the same history and science, so I tend to stick with SCM (although I frequently check their site for book recommendations).
Thank you, everyone, for your help so far. You are awesome! I am aware of Mater Amabilis CM Catholic site. It looks wonderful but I need some more handholding and structure than what they offer. I checked a number of library book available for the levels we would need to complete, and most of them aren’t available, so I would have to purchase most of them new and it would be a VERY expensive curricula to do it this way. That is what appeals so much to me about Simply Charlotte Mason. It is already organized for me, but provides flexibility, and materials that are CM based, and ready to go! One negative of doing any preplanned CM program is that there are quite a few books that I can’t get at our library and this concerns me, as well. That is the main reason I didn’t do a CM approach years ago, and I really want balance, some structure and freedom for some choices, but CM comes at a financial cost/investment. I would really like to also hear from someone who is strongly Catholic, who has completed the Reformation level in the History Curricula, and other SCM subjects. Thanks, again, everyone, for your help thus far. 🙂
Another note – I use my library’s interlibrary loan to get a large portion of the books that I need. If I am not able to purchase them inexpensively, ILL is the next best thing, particularly for books that aren’t used throughout the whole term/year.
(I’ve been using SCM for several years – four or five, maybe – and I haven’t come across anything that would go against our Catholic beliefs. As I mentioned, I’m going to tread carefully with Reformation/Renaissance this coming year, but otherwise I can wholeheartedly recommend their curriculum!)
I am a Catholic and am using SCM resources for many subjects in our home school, but not for History or Bible. I tried a bit of SCM history in our early days, but shortly thereafter came across several excellent Catholic resources that have made it simple (and a pleasure!) for me to teach history from a Catholic Worldview. I suppose I should add that we are traditional Catholics, daily communicants attending TLM, and on top of that I hold an honors degree in History and Political Science….not bragging here at all, only mentioning these things because I suspect these factors played a role in making me pickier than most in my choice for a curriculum for history, bible and religion!
If, for ease of use, you do opt to use SCM history (or any other Protestant worldview history course) you might do well to beef up your own knowledge of Catholic worldview by carefully reading (on your own) Anne Carroll’s Christ the King Lord of History. With Carroll’s book in hand as a sort of teacher-guide, you will have a better grasp on what you might want to add to your Protestant based curriculum to give enhancement from a Catholic perspective. For me, it seemed simpler just to go with a Catholic curriculum, but I appreciate that everyone feels differently about this.
If it interests you at all, my choices for history and Catholic enhancement in all subject areas are:
– For the Love of Literature, by Maureen Wittmann
– Creation to Present: A Catholic World History Resource, by Marcia Neill.
I highly recommend you check out Cathy Duffy’s reviews of these two books.
Finally, I do use the Catholic Textbook project books for many of our history studies. The title is horrible, isn’t it? What CM’er would think you could possibly do narration, and enjoy as a living study, something called “Textbook Project”. Despite the terrible title, I assure you the books are beautiful, many of the assignments quite interesting (including geography and mapping), and most importantly, the writing flows in such a way that narration has actually worked very well for my children.
With the various Catholic Textbook books as our main study, we add literature titles (free reads, or for written narration), by century, based on recommendations from For the Love of Literature and book lists from Creation to Present (both of these books have extensive living literature lists, by century and lists are sub-divided by target student age). Using these three resources, history has been a breeze – and a real pleasure – for us.
Peace be with you,
Angie
Thank you, for your help and suggestions! I have From Sea to Shining Sea, but I didn’t use it yet because I read that it’s best to chronologically study History, and wanted to study History in that manner, and I also hoped to study Canada with our children prior to studying about the US History. We live in Canada, and we have done virtually nothing of Canadian History thus far in our homeschool. Also, the cost with the CAD $ exchange , texes and shipping, it’s almost $200 for the textbook, Student CD Workbook, and the Teacher’s Manual. Then, you have to print out several copies of the workbook for each child. It is a very expensive curriculum. That has also been a deterrent for us, as we would still have to purchase curricula for younger children, as this History curricula is geared towards older students. 4 of our children are very young children, and I will also need to purchase History for them. I really wanted a curricula to do our entire family. I wish it were possible with the Catholic Textbook project.
As far as recommending searching for books in the other libraries, I do this every time. Most of the books from SCM and MA aren’t available in our library, so it would make the curricula extremely expensive. Homeschool books are not available anywhere locally. So, that leaves purchasing brand new and searching here and there, hoping you get the books on a couple of swaps of which I am a part of, but as soon as anything good is posted, it’s gone, so the alternative for everything is mostly purchasing new. New=$$$$$$$$$$ I love CM style but the financial feasibility is not practical unless you have an amazing library!
🙁
Hi there! I’m a Canadian CMer, too! I sometimes find used book shopping via amazon.ca to be helpful (watch the shipping, but there are some books that are $0.01 plus shipping and I can often find some great books that way). Just throwing that out there because I know that book hunting from this side of the border is tricky!
We are not Catholic, but since we hope to give our kids a respect for all church traditions, we have used some books with a Catholic perspective (Children of the New Forest, for instance, was a great historical novel with the protagonists being Royalist Catholics during the English Civil War–we actually listened to that one via a great audiobook).
For the Middle Ages books, given the ages of your kids, I’d skip the William Tyndale book anyway. You might be more comfortable with it when your kids are a bit older (it is a good one!).
Brother Francis and the Friendly Beasts by Margaret Hodges is on the list for the younger kids and it is great for both Catholic and Protestant (her other books are great, too!). Actually, I can’t think of a book in the Gr.1-3 list that wouldn’t be suitable.
Diane Stanley’s Joan of Arc may be a picture book you would be interested in adding. Tomie dePaola also has a number of historical picture books that could be helpful.
This blog has some good book suggestions, too:
http://ebeth.typepad.com/serendipity/2010/08/middle-ages-reading-lists.html (actually, both http://www.elizabethfoss.com/ and http://wildflowersandmarbles.com/ would have picture book suggestions on various feast days that would be easy to incorporate.
I don’t really have a lot to add other than to say I get it – I’m also a Canadian Catholic, and social studies is our achilles heel for these reasons. Good Canadian history resources are limited enough, let alone trying to find ones that aren’t decidedly Protestant. We too, have done basically no history. 🙁
I have been eyeballing The Story of Civilization from TAN Books. It’s basically a Catholic version of SOTW.
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