Review of Apologia Self Paced Biology

If you are a Christian family looking for a Christian homeschool science education, Apologia is a big player in the Christian textbook industry. They have a polished product that tends to please Christian homeschoolers interested in a Christian high school biology program that emphasizes creation, special creation, and creationism. The Apologia Self Paced Biology sticker price of $249 is a bit misleading, however, as clicking deeper into the website, or progressing through the course, reveals a variety of expenses for expensive lab notebooks, microscopes, slides, lab kits, dissections, etc. that may easily result in a total cost of over $1,000 for a single student. They do appear to have generous return policy.

The topics covered in Apologia Self Paced Biology include mostly middle school level life sciences ideas. It’s true that topics centering around ecology and classification were indeed a major focus of high school biology some decades ago; however, modern high school biology classes tend to focus on the topics of cell biology. For example, Apologia Self Paced Biology has just 2 of its 16 modules centering on cell biology topics. The college professors who we know are these days expecting high schoolers to have at least half a year to an entire year of cell biology. From this perspective, it doesn’t seem that the Apologia Self Paced Biology course or textbook is oriented towards college prep.

The Apologia Self Paced Biology textbook has 2 modules focusing on the theme of genetics and evolution, which are in line with a regular high school biology course. It would appear, however, that these chapters are geared towards entertaining a discussion of creationism as it fits into modern science. As a career scientist, I might personally point out that discussions of the origin of life, whether they are creationist or evolutionary, simply aren’t the type of discussions that have ever been held in any professional laboratory. The creation versus evolution discussion is largely a theme explored on television and social media, and it doesn’t in any way impact the lives of scientists or the science they conduct. Furthermore, there is a large body of evidence mounting, called epigenetics, which generally seems to show the irrelevance of the science of genetics as we know it.

There are also 3 modules of Apologia Self Paced Biology dealing with general information (the scientific method, chemistry, and ecology).

The remaining 8 chapters are mainly dealing with classifying living organisms such as vertebrates, invertebrates, birds and mammals. In our opinion, such material tends to be taught moreso in middle school these days rather than high school.