Saxon Math Curriculum

Some homeschooling parents and magazines have began taking fire at the Saxon math program, which was developed by John Saxon. He has good credentials behind him as a Air Force officer and highschool math teacher. His program has been shown to be successful in many ways as well. For instance, this program has increased the number of students who enroll in algebra courses by 400% and students who take any of his math courses have been show to radically outperform the students who use other math programs.

While Saxon has tried very hard to get his curriculum into the public schools he has failed due to opposition of leftist groups such as NOW. These groups say that his math program fails to promote feminism, political correctness and the New World Order. With this in mind, Saxon brought his curriculum to homeschoolers whom he thought would appreciate these books. Once again he failed because some homeschoolers began circulating letters that condemned Saxon's texts as being "New Age" because Saxon made reference to demons, poltergeists and other unpleasant spiritual beings that he thought were just harmless "fairy tale" beings. With this in mind some homeschoolers urged others to boycott the Saxon math curriculum too. Once he noted that this was offensive to some people he promptly removed these references from his books though.

While you would think that this would make these people happy, it didn't. In fact, there are still letters being circulated today that urge Christians to shun Saxon. Those who write these letters defend themselves by saying that Saxon's math books:

• Occasionally use the words "hoyden" (meaning tomboy) and "ribald" (meaning vulgar speech)
• Makes reference to medieval life
• Makes occasional references to fairies and gnomes

However, if these people would simply take some time to sit down and read through all of the problems in a Saxon math book they would find that:

• Saxon's wording is derogatory when it comes to such things as cheating, boasting, being lazy, etc.
• Saxon encourages children to improve their vocabulary through the wording that he uses in his book
• Saxon tries to cause children to be interested in other school subjects besides math, such as history and chemistry. This is done through his frequent references to historic, literary and scientific subjects.
• Saxon's references to such things as fairies are quite sparse if they are even there at all

Of course, as a parent, you are the best judge of what homeschooling materials you will use with your family. However, you do need to take the time to make sure that you make an educated decision. You do need to understand though that there are ways around these aforementioned things so that your child can truly benefit from Saxon's math curriculum. If you choose to use the curriculum, even though you dislike its references, you can:

• Use any math problem that you think is questionable to teach your child the truth as you see it
• Use a felt-tipped marker to delete any problems that you dislike.

Eventually Saxon will be producing a new edition of his curriculum and he is openly listening to whatever corrections you would like to see made. He is very open-minded and thus you can feel free to send him your ideas about character building problems that you would like to see in his book. What more could you ask for?