The Good and The Beautiful Controversy: What You Really Need to Know

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Oh man…The Good and The Beautiful controversy was something I found out about before I had even properly started homeschooling.

I can tell you, it wasn’t a great look for the homeschool community.

There were a lot of nasty words thrown around and honestly, it was confusing.

As a brand new homeschooler looking for curriculum to use, it was difficult to know who to trust and what to believe.

So, if you’re where I was, then I suggest you keep reading. I’m going to share what the controversy is all about and then some thoughts of my own.

An Overview of The Good and The Beautiful Controversy

The Good & The Beautiful is a homeschool curriculum created by Jenny Phillips.

She is a homeschooling mom herself and has spent an enormous amount of effort along with her team, building the curriculum.

It is wildly popular, and for good reason.

It really is good and beautiful.

However, a certain blogger who previously promoted and used the curriculum with her own children came out and condemned it based on her personal beliefs.

The bases of her condemnation was that the curriculum is promoted as being “Christian” and because the author of the curriculum is from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the blogger felt as though this was disingenious.

The blogger is an evangelical Christian and does not consider those of the LDS church to be Christians.

Honestly, this is a deep subject and not something that I feel the need to delve into here.

There are so many different beliefs in this world and there are going to be a lot of times where we’re just going to have to agree to disagree.

The main thing that many non-LDS homeschool moms want to know about The Good & The Beautiful curriculum is whether or not it has LDS doctrine in it.

Personally, I haven’t come across anything that suggests it.

I’m a born again Christian and I’ve not found anything alarming in the curriculum thus far.

It focuses on Christian morals but is firmly non-denominational as far as I can tell.

What Has Our Family Chosen?

You can likely tell from the above comments that we’ve used The Good & The Beautiful homeschool curriculum to some extent.

One of the reasons that I chose to homeschool my children was to protect their hearts and minds while they’re still so little.

I do not feel as though The Good & The Beautiful curriculum is something that is going to do them any harm.

I also find it so strange that many of those that have an issue with The Good & The Beautiful also use secular homeschool curriculum choices.

It just doesn’t make sense to me.

However, just because it doesn’t make sense to me doesn’t mean that will apply to all.

I’m going to talk more about that below.

Masterbooks vs The Good and The Beautiful

These are two curriculums that seem to be polarizing for many homeschool communities.

For whatever reason, there are often opinions that one is great and the other is trash.

Well, I’m here to say that you can actually use both if it works for your family.

The two curriculums are just different. They are written very differently from each other and one might work better for your family than the other.

You also may find (as we have) that one works better for a particular subject than the other.

At the end of the day, I don’t see either curriculum as being inferior to the other.

We just have to realize that each child is unique. What works for one won’t work for the other. Making sweeping statements about a particular curriculum is often fairly unhelpful and I encourage every homeschool mom to do her own research.

The Danger of Opinion

Condemning The Good & The Beautiful curriculum is not something that makes sense to ME, but it makes sense to other homeschool moms who have chosen not to use it…and that is totally fine.

Something that I’ve noticed in the homeschool community is the danger of opionions.

Whether people have asked for others opinions on a curriculum or not, it seems that they’re readily given.

Most of the time, that’s great. I mean, I LOVE hearing from other homeschool moms about what has and hasn’t worked for them.

However, I’m seeing a growing trend of “stay away from this curriculum” or “this is trash, don’t use that”.

Homeschooling is supposed to be about freedom and that freedom should extend to our homeschool curriculum choices as well.

While you may have strong opinions for or against a curriculum, it is not helpful at all to push those opinions on others.

We use a different curriculum for almost every subject.

We use both The Good & The Beautiful AND Masterbooks (and the battle between these communities is ongoing).

Guess what? It works beautifully for our family.

So, this is me saying do what works for your family. Make up your own mind about companies and the curriculum that they provide.

If you dislike a curriculum, it is fine to share that, but try to do it without making it seem like it won’t work for anyone else.

Gosh, I’m so sad thinking about what blessings we would have missed out on had I gone on the opinions of others and not tried certain curriculums.

Homeschooling is a journey and it is yours for the undertaking. Enjoy it and soak it in.

The controversies will continue, but they don’t have to negatively affect your family.