The Story
Of A MURDERED
Homeschooled Child

Johnny seemed like an ordinary child. He seemed average, generally happy. He came from a long line of farmers. But he had a special gift.

The family farming business always did okay. Some years were good, some years bad, but through it all they homeschooled Johnny. He didn’t really excel at anything, you wouldn’t call him a genius or “gifted” in the public-school-definition of the word. He just seemed ordinary. He struggled with some subject, had easier times with others, but he got through it.

As Johnny got older, and began to become more involved with the business of farming (aside from the ordinary chores), he began to have ideas on how to improve the farm, how to make things better. He even began to experiment with different fertilizer mixtures in his spare time. He used very basic scientific techniques of experiments. He made one small plot of land a “control” then experimented with other plots. Simple stuff.

As it turned out, his little experiments actually created an amazing discovery. Without any complicated science, and some simple ingenuity, he figured out how to mix fertilizers to nearly DOUBLE his farm’s crop yield. His family went from doing “okay” to producing so much yield they even began to market his fertilizer mix.

So Johnny not only was a hero to his family but to the world in general. His simple innovation helped farmers across the country and even the world. Even if just by a little bit, Johnny contributed to the world.

The only problem with this story is that Johnny was murdered. He was murdered in middle school, before any of this could happen. There is no innovative fertilizer, his family still struggles, and the world wasn’t improved.

But Johnny is alive today. It’s not the same Johnny of course. This Johnny still helps out around the farm. He is frustrated and always wants to leave. He works as a checkout cashier at the local grocery store when the farm is slow. He has no real plans for the future. He doesn’t look forward, he doesn’t think about anything more. He IS just ORDINARY. His curriculum TAUGHT him to be ORDINARY.

His future was murdered because his homeschool science education failed him. Badly. It never gave him a chance to think about science. Sure Johnny did science. He used the normal homeschool science curriculum that everyone else uses. The problem was that it was so fluffy, and boring, and incomplete that it MURDERED his true potential interest in science. He never got a complete picture, and he never learned to think like a scientist.

What Is This All About?

I know the title was harsh, and a few people even yelled at us over it. In fact, it took a lot of debate and soul-searching about using that title, but we decided to keep the title and story for the CRITICAL REASON that it is intended as an Alarm Bell

The reality of the facts are so disturbing that EVERY PARENT must be made aware. You can't have an alarm to wake you up with a gentle sound, or a polite title. This issue was so important to us, that we need to get your attention. So if we disturbed you, we wish there was another way, but we didn't want anyone to miss the message.

We knew we would be starting a war if we exposed the facts. Many of us wanted to just keep it to ourselves, create our own science program, and be done with it. In the end, our conscience left us no choice. We can't knowingly watch other children have their future be strangled. As an American it is intolerable. As an American I am embarrassed, and cannot stand for it.

What Is The Problem?

The problem is that American science curriculum (including homeschool science curriculum) is flat-out broken. It doesn't work. It DOES NOT produce children prepared for the best jobs in America.

That means your child, and my child are not being properly prepared.

What Is The Proof?

After a series of tests and analysis comparing hundreds of thousands of children from 50 different countries, America comes out at the very bottom. We can only beat Mexico, South Africa and occasionally Iran.

Every other country beats us hands-down. That means THEIR children are being educated to take the jobs we are giving away.

Who beats us? The same countries we imported 400,000 foreign workers from to take our highest paying jobs. The same countries Microsoft alone imported 100,000 Microsoft-Certified workers from last year. Even when comparing our best students, from the best schools, using the best curriculum, we did worse. Even our best and brightest couldn't even compete.

Let me remind you once more. First thoughts were that the problem was in the school system. Low income students, poor schools, bad teacher, etc. The conclusion of extensive analysis was that IT WAS NOT THE SCHOOLS, NOT THE STUDENTS, NOT THE TEACHERS; the problem was clearly identified as "American Style Curriculum."

What's The Root Of The Problem?

The root of the problem is that we have too many standards. Each state has their curriculum standards, even separate school districts have their own agenda. With all the mish-mash of standards, curriculum publishers are stuck trying to "cover" them all. If they don't cover all the topics, school districts won't buy them.

Problem #1: A "Mile Wide and an Inch Deep"

So our national standards for science curriculum is the mish-mash of literally hundreds of different individual standards and guidelines.

Homeschool science publishers are stuck in the same trap. They need to make sure you "cover" enough topics.

Here's where the problem shows up. By trying to "cover" so many topics, American textbooks ended up being nearly 4 times as thick and heavy than the top performing countries. Yet despite that thickness, very little is taught. Each topic is "touched on", yet doesn't give enough depth.

To make matters worse, children's minds are full of a myriad of disconnected, arbitrary facts with no depth. How can they make sense of that. That leads to Problem #2.

Problem #2: The Key Concepts Are Lost In The Fluff

I recently read a chapter from a homeschool science curriculum on The Solar System. (There is a sample online so you can see for yourself.) They talked about the colors of light, magnifying glasses and a myriad of other topics. Of course each topic was touched on. So which were the key concepts your child needed to learn about The Solar System? The magnifying glass, the color of light? Or is it the 87 other arbitrary facts?

The top performing countries don't do this. They understand that the information will only confuse the child's understanding of the key science fundamentals. Instead, they stick to the six key concpets of The Solar System. They talk about those 6 fundamental ideas enough so your child has a solid understanding.

They save the magnifying glass stuff to the chapter on Lenses. So when your child gets to lenses, they will understand how magnifying glasses work and why it's different from other lenses.

So in the end your child will have a SOLID understanding of The Solar System fundamentals, AND a solid understanding on the FUNDAMENTALS OF LENSES.

Problem #3: Too Much Too Early, Too Little Too Late

Homeschoolers understand the concept of Delayed Learning and Just In Time Learning. You know what I'm talking about, why teach a two year old how to write when their muscles aren't even developed enough to hold a pencil, then complain about their handwriting!

You will be surprised to learn that the top performing countries have mastered the art of Just In Time Learning. They only teach certain concepts to certain ages. This way your child will solidly understand the principles at work even if they are missing a few of the more complex ideas.

With a solid understanding of the principles, when your child revisits the topic later (with fundamentals of other topics under their belt) they will be ready for the more complex ideas.

They do this because their ultimate goal is to create science thinkers! They want children to think about science and apply science. They understand you can learn arbitrary facts any time, but understanding the science, and thinking like a scientist is the ultimate goal.

Problem #4: We Need To Create Scientific Thinkers

America has an obsession with facts. It stems from all those overlapping, glued-together science standards.  And our children need to "cover" all these topics.

The top performing countries don't do this. Instead their focus and goal is on creating scientific thinkers. They use the Just In Time, and Push Fundamentals approaches. They are creating the people who will innovate and create for the future. That is their NATIONAL AGENDA. And it's working!

Take for example the small country of South Korea. You could probably fit everyone from that country into the south half of New Jersey, yet they produce more scientists and PhDs than all of the United States combined! That's not per-person, that's total count. How? It is their agenda, it is in the design of their curriculum, and it works!

Historically America was the country of innovation. Our best of our best created, invented and innovated. Unfortunately that's still partially true. Lots of innovation still comes from American companies, but they come from foreign workers who are working for the American companies. Hence our huge influx of imported foreign skilled workers.

This needs to change. The change starts with us. Homeschoolers.

So What Is eFantasmic Going To Do About It?

Well, we already started. We targeted the top two countries Singapore and South Korea. They are always the Gold and Silver Medalists. Singapore mostly leads in science scores, but Korea leads the world in shear production of scientists and PhDs.

Like I mentioned earlier, South Korea has more PhDs in their little country than the entirety of America or any other country.  So imagine how many Masters Degrees, and other college graduates and scientists they have.

Next, there are published guidlines from the studies and analysis from all the various testing that was done.

We combined it all, and we already started creating curriculum for our own children. We talk more about what we did on the main page for the cuurriculum here.

To Make It Available Or Not?

The next debate we had internally was whether to make it available to others. We already invested a great deal of expense for our own children. To make a version for the general public would be extremely costly, and we weren't sure that we wanted to undertake such a venture.

All of us homeschool our own children. The thought of a gigantic project just didn't appeal to anyone.  Plus, we knew that people would be angry with us for challenging the existing system. None of it sounded good.

In the end, it was concluded that it was unconscionable to keep something like this to ourselves. So we decided to make it available to others.

The Next Big Question - How Much To Charge?

So the next big challenge facing us was this. If it was so important for other children, and the country, shouldn't we make it available for free to all?

If it were something simple, it would be less of a question. As it stands, there are lots of outside people invested both with their time and their money.  So it's not an easy question, yet an important one.

To make a long story short, we reached a compromise. So here's the deal.

We are going to make the core concepts portion of the curriculum available to HomeschoolFreeStuff newsletter subscribers for FREE.

We will provide all the important stuff parents need to teach their children, right in the newsletter.

What About Existing Subscribers to eFantasmic?

Our subscribers are our lifeblood. Without them we would surely die. So eFantasmic subscribers get a formalized version of the curriculum, complete with experiment sheets, vocabulary and concept discussion sheets and more.

When Will It Start?

We are formalizing the curriculum now, and will make announcements right in the HomeschoolFreeStuff newsletter. But the first ones should be available shortly. We will also be publishing instructions shortly.

How Can I Help?

Inform as many parents as you can about what's going on with science curriculum in America.

How Do I Get Started?

First you need to make sure you are a current subscriber of the HomeschoolFreeStuff newsletter. It's free to subscribe. Updates will be announced there, so go do that now.

Click Here To Subscribe To
The HomeschoolFreeStuff Newsletter

Additional Support Data & References
(Work In Progress... More To Come...)

Note: As you read these references, I am going to try and put the more recent references in the beginning. As you scroll down you will notice the oldest ones are from 1996. You will also notice that the problem was clearly identified over 15 years ago with the first test results showing how poorly Americans do. But when you look at the MOST RECENT tests comparing the best of our best, we have only gotten worse in the last 15 years. So the likelyhood of the curriculum you bought within the last few years being any better is slim. To none.

Washington Post References:
Maria Glod
December 5, 2007; Page A07

Not Preparing Children For The Future:
"The PISA results underscore concerns that too few U.S. students are prepared to become engineers, scientists and physicians, and that the country might lose ground to competitors."

2006 Results Show We Only Barely Outcompete 5 Nations (Very, Very Small Nations)
"The scores from the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment showed that U.S. 15-year-olds trailed their peers from many industrialized countries. ... On the science portion, U.S. students, most of them 10th-graders, received an average score of 489 on a 1,000-point scale, 11 points below the average of the 30 countries." We outperformed only 5 other countries.

No Improvement In This Test Series Since 2003
"The ranking of U.S. students in math and science is about the same as it was in 2003."

Pascal D. Forgione, Jr., Ph.D.
U.S. Commissioner of Education Statistics

False Beliefs
For years, people have taken false comfort in the notion that while the performance of all our students may be poor, our strength lies in our top students. Many people believe that our best students perform better than the best students of most other countries. TIMSS shows this notion to be untrue.  Note again that many superior countries (especially the Asians) are not included in the reported results.

They Used To Copy Us...
"During ten years of the cultural revolution, South Korea adopted the U.S. System, dumping it when their results nosedived."

Worse The Older Children Get
"In short, the tests showed U.S. fourth-graders performing poorly, middle school students worse. and high school students are unable to compete. By the same criteria used to say we were "average" in elementary school, "we appear to be "near the bottom" at the high school level."

It Is The Curriculum
"the actual cause for the failures appears to be weak math and science curricula in U.S. middle schools."

Text Book Approach Fails Us
"U.S. textbooks treat topics with a "mile-wide, inch-deep" approach, Schmidt said. A typical U.S. eighth-grade math textbook deals with about 35 topics. By comparison, a Japanese or German math textbook for that age would have only five or six topics. "

Education Policy Analysis Archives
Volume 8 Number 15

Poor Curriculum Throughout Textbook Design
"Flanders examined several textbook series and found that fewer than 50% of the pages in textbooks for grades two through eight contained any material new to students. In a review of a dozen middle-grade mathematics textbook series,Kulm,Morris and Grier found that most traditional textbook series lack many of the content recommendations made in recent standards documents."

TIMSS Twelfth Grade Analysis Findings
A series of tests were conducted and analyzed to see how well graduating highschoolers were prepared. This was to find out if the current curriculum could prepare children for a possible future in a more advanced field or job.

The Best Of Our Best Can't Compete
"What about the US's better students? When asked, Schmidt replied, "For some time now, Americans have comforted themselves when confronted with bad news about their educational system by believing that our better students can compare with similar students in any country in the world. We have preferred not to believe that we were doing a consistently bad job. Instead, many have believed that the problem was all those 'other' students who do poorly in school and who we, unlike other countries, include in international tests. That simply isn't true. TIMSS has burst another myth - our best students in mathematics and science are simply not 'world class'. Even the very small percentage of students taking Advanced Placement courses are not among the world’s best."

Textbook Design Is Failing Us
"our textbooks are highly repetitive and unchallenging in grade after grade of the middle school years. How could they provide a sound foundation on which to build during the high school years?"

Teaching More Later Can't Compensate For Middle School Weakness
"high school mathematics and science is unlikely to overcome the poor foundation provided during US middle school education"

Poor Curriculum Design
"US science and mathematics curricula cover many topics but without devoting much time to any one topic."

Poor Foundation Will Haunt The Children Into The Future
"US students have been provided with weak foundations for studying advanced mathematics and science.. "Our high school specialists are ill prepared to gain the most from advanced study", Schmidt said. "A few grades of weak specialization in high school does not appear able to overcome the weak foundation we lay in earlier grades."

Issues In Science & Technology Magazine
a publication of the National Academy of Science
Gilbert A. Valverde & William H. Schmidt

Our Texbooks Are Four Times Larger Than Other Countries
"One striking feature of U.S. textbook and curriculum guides as compared to those of other countries is the magnitude of the differences. Our textbooks are much larger and heavier than those of all other TIMSS countries. Fourth-grade schoolchildren in the United States use mathematics and science textbooks that contain an average of 530 and 397 pages, respectively. Compare this to the international average length of mathematics and science textbooks intended for children of this age of 170 and 125 pages, respectively."

Not Enough
"...breadth of topics is presented in these textbooks at the expense of depth of coverage."

Lack Of Focus In Curriculum Design
"A curriculum that emphasizes the coverage of long lists of topics instead of the teaching and learning of a more focused set of basic contents, to be explored in depth and mastered, is a curriculum that is apt to result in the squandering of the resources that teachers and children bring to bear on the teaching and learning of these contents. The unfocused curriculum is not a curriculum of high achievement."

The Essence Of US Curriculum Design Is Faulty
"The unfocused curriculum of the United States is also a curriculum of very little coherence. Attempting to cover a large number of topics results in textbooks and teaching that are episodic. U.S. textbooks and teachers present items one after the other from a laundry list of topics prescribed by state and local district guides, in a frenzied attempt to cover them all before the school year runs out. This is done with little or no regard for establishing the relationship between various topics or themes on the list. The loss of these relationships between ideas encourages children to regard these disciplines as no more than disjointed notions that they are unable to conceive of as belonging to a disciplinary whole."

It Comes Down To Basics
"Other nations act as if far more mathematics and science topics are basic. In these countries, basics are so important that when they are introduced the curriculum focuses on them. They are given concentrated attention so that they can be mastered, and children can be prepared to learn a new set of different basics in following grades. Such focused curricula are the motor of a dynamic definition of basics. Among the highest-achieving countries, each new grade sees new basics receiving concentrated attention to prepare students for the mastery of more complicated topics that are yet to come."

It's Important To Create Thinkers
"High academic standards require students to reason, analyze, and develop the ability to solve problems and understand the processes of science and mathematics"

Lots and Lots Of Curricula Mashed Together
"There are many bodies guiding education in the United States. There are close to 16,000 local school districts in public education alone, a variety of intermediate districts, and many other private and public bodies concerned with education. Respect for local control has resulted in state and national standards (mostly proposed by national professional or scientific organizations such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics or the National Research Council) that can provide little guidance for implementation, because these standards compete with many others for the attention of school administrators and teachers. Add to this mix a wide array of commercially produced textbooks and standardized tests, each embodying yet another definition of what is basic, and the situation can be depicted as a veritable Tower of Babel."

I'll try to post more as I have time. We are amazingly busy over here trying to get things launched. So as I have time, I will try to get more references online. I literally have folders full of PDF files of reports and research papers. Wish us luck!