• mouserat
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    10 months ago

    Although, I was one of those home-schooled children of Christian parents<

    In my country we do not have home schools, so I am really curious and hope you don’t mind the question: How is your education history - when did you get in touch with real science, what did you think about it and did home schooling have an influence on the career you chose?

    • MrMcGasion@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Sure! Honestly, my home-schooling was better than most, my Mom was a state-licensed school teacher who taught in private schools, and when I was in highschool she became a public school teacher. I was homeschooled for every year except kindergarten, and was strongly encouraged to go to Bob Jones University for university - which I did for 3 years, before dropping out and never finishing. Parts of my education were great, math, language, and any subject that didn’t involve evolution or history that couldn’t be considered as disagreeing with the Bible were generally good. In high-school, our parents got busy, and we used video classes, also from Bob Jones University taught by some of the school’s professors, still didn’t learn about the facts of evolution, or climate change, or history prior to ~6000 B.C.E. but at least the physics and biology we got still taught things like biological taxonomy, and basic atomic theory.

      The most we talked about evolutionary biology was to note that it was a thing that most people believed, but that God made the world in 6 days, but that scientists eyes were blinded by wanting to not be accountable to a creator, so they invented evolution to poorly explain how we got here. And since God made the world, he wouldn’t let it be destroyed, so there’s no way human-caused climate change could be real.

      It wasn’t until after I had been out of university for a couple of years that I started to come around on climate change (in part due to a Veritasium video on YouTube debunking a lot of the claims I had been told) and I started to realize how poor my education had been. I do think being home-schooled helped me learn how to teach myself, and I really do enjoy learning - especially about the topics that were kept from me.

      As far as the career, I was heavily encouraged to do something that was in some kind of “Christian ministry.” I dropped out of university partly over disagreements about that. So yeah, had I gone to proper school, it’s likely my career would have gone in a different direction.

      • mouserat
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        10 months ago

        Thank you! I never heard the argument that human-caused climate change cannot be real, cause God wouldn’t let the world be destroyed. I wonder if they also don’t believe in the power of nuclear weapons for this reason. But good to hear you still got physics - the post about electricity made me wonder if they just skip topics like atoms/electrons. Cool that you are so open-minded to question the things you learned so many years later!

      • Agamemnon@lemmy.worldOP
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        10 months ago

        🏆 Wholesomeness award. May your story serve as inspiration for others. To follow in your footsteps, to put in the effort of seeking the education that was denied, to dedicate life to learning and growing as a person and to look at the past with wisdom instead of bitterness.