As I’ve stated in other postings, a significant number of parents elect home schooling for their children because they feel that a religious-based education is superior to that which is provided in the secular environment. However, those holding such beliefs tend to ignore the simple fact that there are indeed other faiths and that it is quite likely that their children will one day have to interact with those who do not share the same beliefs

Those resources listed below that are available via your web browser are hyperlinked while those available on the iTunesU web site are given using “pipe notation,” where “|” (“pipe”) means “select” or “go to.” If you don’t have iTunes installed on your computer, use this link to the iTunes download page. Once you have it installed and running, just click the “iTunesU” link in the menu bar.

Links to specific texts listed below are to the Scribd.com web site. At the time of this writing all cited texts are available for download by subscribers to that site.

Introduction to Religion

Missouri State University / Lora Hobbs, MA

iTunesU | Universities and Colleges | Missouri State University | Course Title

Of all the Internet resources available on the general topic of “religion,” this is the only one that I would recommend without reservation or qualification. The course begins with a review of the question “What do we mean when we say ‘religion’?” before the instructor undertakes a doctrinally neutral, “non-dogmatic,” survey of the major world religions. As of this writing, the two texts recommended below are either freely available online or can be purchased from any of the major online book retailers.

Recommended Reading:

World Religions, Martin Palmer (ed). London: TIMES/HarperCollins, 2004.

The Encyclopedia of World Religions, Rev. Edition. Robert Ellwood and Gregory Alles (eds.). New York: Facts on File; imprint of Infobase, 2007.

Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible)

Yale University / Christine Hayes, PhD.

When it comes to Biblical studies courses that are given outside of a seminary, one must be careful not to incur the wrath of those who insist that their personal dogmatic beliefs are superior to anyone else’s dogmatic beliefs. Fortunately, most college level instructors are able to accomplish this “tightrope walk” with relative ease.

This introductory course is taught by Dr. Christine Hayes of Yale University, who strives to “maintain an even keel” through some potentially doctrinally-unstable waters. In this task she succeeds, although some fundamentally-oriented religious types will question her use of a Biblical translation other than the King James version.

Recommended Reading:

The Jewish Study Bible: Featuring the Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation. Oxford: 2004.

Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: The Bible, Harold Bloom (ed). New York: Chelsea, 2006.

Literature and World of the Old Testament

Missouri State University / John Strong, PhD.

iTunes U: iTunes | iTunes U | Universities and Colleges | Missouri State University | Course Title

This is another Old Testament introduction course taught at Missouri State University by Dr. John Strong. Along with Dr. Hayes’ course, above, these suggestions are given in the hope that each will help the learner to understand that there is more than one way to interpret the Judaeo-Christian scriptures.

Recommended Reading:

The same as for “Introduction to the Old Testament (‘Hebrew Bible’),” above.

Introduction to New Testament History and Literature

Yale University / Dale Martin, PhD.

This course is my personal favorite when it comes to an even-handed study of Christianity, a complex and potentially volatile, subject. It does, however, stick to a purely historical reading and interpretation of the Christian scriptures, both canonical and extra-biblical.

Recommended Reading:

Any modern translation of the Bible, such as the Revised Standard Version (New Testament) or the Jerusalem Bible.

Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: The Bible, Harold Bloom (ed). New York: Chelsea, 2006.

Ehrman, Bart. From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity. New York: The Teaching Company, 2004.

The Historical Jesus

Stanford University / Thomas Sheehan, PhD.

iTunes U | Universities and Colleges | Stanford University | The Historical Jesus

If your beliefs about Jesus of Nazareth are based on “tradition” or, perhaps , are oriented toward the more fundamental side of the religious spectrum, you might as well stop reading now. For those open-minded enough to understand that the historical questions relating to the origins of Christianity can be discussed fairly and openly, I cannot recommend this series of lectures highly enough.

Recommended Reading:

The same as for “Introduction to New Testament History and Literature,” above.

Sheehan, Thomas. The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity. New York: Random House, 1986; electronic reproduction, 2000.

In upcoming posts I’ll give a set of recommendations from yet another academic field.

 

Online Resources for Home School Students and Their Parents

For the past two years I have been tutoring high school and undergraduate college students who, for any number of reasons, are having a hard time “keeping up with the class,” particularly in the sciences but also in the humanities as well. Although I freely admit that I have been dealing with a very small sample of all students, and am thus not making a generalization, I have noticed a somewhat disturbing trend, one that will some readers will find “controversial.”

Despite what some proponents of home schooling will claim, I have noticed that there are just as many (if not more) “home-schooled” students that are having academic difficulties as are their public school peers. As to why this is the case, I offer no explanation but do offer one observation.

Many home-schooled students have told me that they come from families with strong religious convictions. So strong are such convictions that the primary criteria in the selection of home school educational materials seems to be how well such materials reflect the parents’ religious convictions rather than what is being taught in the mainstream educational system. You may not like to hear it, but your home-schooled child is probably going to laughed out of the classroom if they are in a Biology 101 class and insist that their Bible (or Qur’an, or Book of Mormon, etc) offers the only acceptable answers in questions relating to the sciences.

Admittedly, many home schooled students will have no trouble in making the intellectual adjustment to the demand of college or to the workforce. However, I must say that home schooling is certainly no guarantee that these students are receiving the skills that are necessary for success in either venue.

With that caveat in mind, here are a few of the websites that I always recommend for supplementing the educational materials used by home-schooled students.

iTunes U

In my opinion, iTunes University would be the hands-down winner if anyone were to organize a contest to select the single best online educational resource. As a bonus, many students will already have the iTunes software on their personal computers. If not, the necessary software is available free from the iTunes download site (for Windows, since Apple machines will usually come with iTunes already installed). If not, use the same link (in the lower left column) to get iTunes for Macs.

Once on the iTunes web site, click on the iTunesU link in the second toolbar from the top of the page and spend a few hours checking out what is available absolutely free. I’m sure that you will be impressed.

You Tube / Veoh

There are probably several million Internet users that will agree with my opinion that a significant part of the material available on YouTube is, at best, garbage. However, I have found that there is some very good programming available if you take the time to look for it. The same is true for Veoh although, in my opinion, Veoh content is generally superior to what you will find on YouTube. Once again, it’s up to you to decide what you or your child will watch.

Unlike YouTube, to get the most out of Veoh you will need to install the Veoh Web Player plugin. This “lightweight” (< 20 Mb) plugin imbeds itself your favorite web browser (Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc) and allows you to view the longer video programs that are available on Veoh. I have used this plugin for several years and have no complaints, particularly relative to the “adware” or “spyware” programs that some unscrupulous web sites will attach to “free software.”

Scribd

I can’t say enough good things about Scribd.com simply because, and again in my personal opinion, using this site is like having a 2 million-book library at your beck and call “24 / 7 / 365.” I started using this site about 18 months ago and now have around 4,000 books, transcripts, and such, on subjects from anthropology to vertebrate zoology on a 16Gb flash drive, and each of them was downloaded from Scribd. Trust me on this one: if you can’t find a good reference book on any subject at Scribd, that book probably doesn’t exist.

The only negative here is that Scribd is not a free resource although, as of this writing, a subscription is just under $10 per month. When you pause to remember that $10 would not pay for the Table of Contents in most new textbooks, you will see that Scribd is well worth its price.

Internet Archive

By sheer volume of resources, Internet Archive is hard to beat. This is another one of those “if you can’t find it here …” sites, particularly if you’re looking for something that has been out of print for a very long time or, if it has been reprinted, would be difficult to locate unless you had access to a major university library. In that respect, Internet Archive is probably the first place you should look for translations and reproduction copies of historical documents as well as entire texts of commentary and analysis relative to those documents.

Internet Archive also contains copies of practically everything that is available through the Project Gutenberg site. You can, of course, always check Gutenberg if you don’t find what you’re looking for, but if the Archive doesn’t have it, then it probably isn’t available online.

In upcoming posts I plan to review online resources that are relevant to specific academic subjects that, I hope, will be of interest not only to home school parents and students but also to those readers wishing more than just a passing knowledge of a given subject area.