Another discussion on The Homeschool Lounge was about the resources used for teaching Worldview.  If you are unfamiliar with this subject you may like to skip to the last three paragraphs first where I define worldview and talk about establishing that in our younger children before we delve into a deep study.  But here are the resources we have in our house at the moment:

My son has watched the DVD series How Should we then Live by Francis Schaeffer. Since he has studied history well, this connected a lot of the why to the what happened in history. Highly recommended. (You can get this in book form, DVD, and mp3 though DVD would be my recommendation due to the images shown.)

He is reading Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey.

He is also studying Foundations of Apologetics. It is a DVD study course. The back of the DVD says: that it is designed to introduce a comprehensive range of apologetic arguments and strategies. … Students of this rigorous curriculum will become adept at recognizing the many worldviews influencing our culture and equipped to challenge the assumptions of these worldviews….

He has on his shelf to read The Greatest Hoax on Earth by Jonathan Sarfati which is based on the creation/evolution debate. Though this is using a specific issue it is based on understanding a worldview and seeing its impact on a person’s belief system and therefore actions.

We have a course ready for our kids called Thinking like a Christian by David Noebel – we are waiting to get a DVD (we had a video and due to international settings this has never worked but we believe it is now on DVD which should work for us.) So we haven’t actually tested this one yet.

The book I love – because it is easy, friendly and not deep and yet addresses the pertinent worldview questions is How to be your Own Selfish Pig by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay. I am reading this aloud every so often for Sunday Breakfast conversation – it is a conversational type book, nearly a living book – with prompts for thinking and asking questions. Even my youngest can participate with this book.

I have Defending your Faith from AiG but my son, after he had finished Schaeffer’s How Should we Then Live felt it was too easy and didn’t pursue it. But I keep it in mind for my other children.

The other books that we’ve found helpful is the Logic books by Bluedorns – The Fallacy Detective, and the Thinking Toolbox. Thinking logically is important foundation in worldview studies

Now to put all this into some perspective – my son is 17. He loves history and politics, and He loves God and His Word. He is a deep thinker. He studies the above by himself though I believe talking it over with him is very very important. I would not necessarily expect all of this of my other children. But worldview – understanding what you believe and why, and then secondarily understanding what others believe and why is important to our family. I expect to use The Thinking Toolbox, Defending your Faith, and How to be your own selfish pig with my other children. We will have to see if we dig further with them.

I believe we are teaching worldview as we apply the Bible to our life every day – and as we explain to our children why we do this, and what the Bible has to say about that. I think children need to be clear on their own perspective (or family perspective) before they go digging into the worldview of the world. Keeping this in mind there are many books that the children read that are establishing their worldview (what they believe and why) before they hit the age and maturity to study worldview as a subject. (AiG is one of the primary sources we have used for intentional instruction on the application of the Bible to our everyday life and beliefs.)

And maybe this should have been mentioned earlier in this post – but studying the Bible is the foundational resource for worldview studies. Therefore as we start Bible study with our young children we are on the way for establishing them for further study later on in their life. One of the things that astounds me often with my 15dd is that we will be in the middle of a deep and often heated discussion about issues of the world and she is very quiet and seemingly uninvolved and then out of the blue she would say “But doesn’t the Bible say ……”. This is what we want. Worldview needs to be connected with the Word of God. She blesses me so often by this quite discerning spirit.