The History of Apologia

08.28.2008

The History of Apologia Science

Real Science, Real Christianity
A professor’s ministry to homeschoolers led to a curriculum distinctively designed for home use

By Hal Young

When a homeschool group asked a chemistry professor to teach a co-op class, he had no idea what they were talking about. When they explained it, he turned them down. He didn’t know that decision would one day make him a publisher.

Looking back, Dr. Jay Wile said, “It seemed like teaching a class was leaving the strength of homeschooling, which is the study -- not the teacher.” Instead, he proposed an alternative – he would write them a chemistry program to study at home, and they could call him if they had any questions. The students paid about five dollars a month to cover the copying costs.

“I wasn’t evening thinking about writing a book,” Wile said. Instead, the books came looking for him.

“The reason I got interested in homeschooling was the product.”

Jay Wile didn’t start out to be a homeschool author or parent, either. After he earned his PhD in nuclear chemistry at the University of Rochester, Dr. Wile taught chemistry and physics at Ball State University. That’s where he first encountered homeschooling, talking with one of his students who was “head and shoulders above the rest.”

“I told him he should get a PhD in chemistry,” Wile said, and asked him where he’d gone to high school. The student replied, “At home.”

“I didn’t know what to think about that,” Wile said. “I filed it under ‘Mysteries I Don’t Have Time To Investigate’.”

“It was really providential that I was teaching at Ball State,” he said. Ball State’s open admissions policy had created “a critical mass” of homeschoolers at a time when many colleges made admissions difficult. Driving home one afternoon, Wile realized his top three students were all homeschooled. “That told me it was time to investigate this further,” he said.

Wile contacted the state homeschool association and offered to do presentations on getting into college. They welcomed him, he said, “But the very first question I got asked was, ‘What science curriculum do you recommend?’”

Wile discovered the most popular science textbooks at the time all assumed a trained science teacher would present the material. To make it more practical for homeschoolers, Wile wrote his chemistry program to be self-explanatory. When word got around about his chemistry “book”, he created Apologia Educational Ministries to handle the demand. Soon there were requests for a companion text for physics, then a biology textbook Wile wrote in collaboration with Marilyn Durrell.

“We thought that would be all,” he said. “I did the desktop publishing and my own crummy graphics, and we sold it in a three-ring binder.” It wasn’t slick paper or colorful diagrams that sold the book – it was the different approach to science education that Wile had taken.

“We started over.”

Part of it is Apologia’s unabashedly Christian worldview. The Greek name is a legal term the apostle Peter used when he said to be “ready to give a defense” to inquirers about the faith (1 Peter 3:15). Wile was dissatisfied with textbooks that seemed to add a veneer of Bible verses over a basically secular curriculum. “We started over,” he said of Apologia.

His inspiration was James Clerk Maxwell, one of the founders of modern physics. “He started every lecture and every experiment with prayer,” he said. “I teach science the way Maxwell taught it -- not, ‘Here is Science, let’s see how it fits with Scripture’, but rather, ‘Here’s how the Creator did it.’”

Even so, Wile has found non-Christians use Apologia because of its straightforward pedagogical approach. Atheists tell him they just black out words and sections they object to, like Christians may do with secular texts.

Wile designed the lab work in Apologia to use a minimum of specialized equipment and chemicals, too, making it still more practical for homeschooling.

He said that interest in their materials spread slowly at first, attracting “either the desperate or the experienced homeschooler” – the ones who had tried other textbooks without success. “One year, though, sales went up three hundred percent,” Wile said. “That one huge spike was a reflection of word of mouth from veterans. It gave us legitimacy. And once the sales got us, then we could improve the books’ production quality.”

Apologia grew into a complete science curriculum, and in the process, developed into a regular ministry of making parents comfortable teaching science. In 1999, Dr. Wile’s wife Kathleen went to work full time with Apologia. Dr. Wile left the university to work as a laboratory consultant to have more time to spend with their teenaged daughter.

While Apologia was a rousing success, Wile realized the business was becoming a burden to him. He wanted to teach science, not run a publishing firm. He and Kathleen discovered their daughter didn’t want to inherit the family business, either.

“I needed an exit strategy so I could retire,” Wile said. The problem was how to maintain the unique ministry of Apologia while finding someone to take over the business operation.

As it happened, a couple of veteran homeschoolers in North Carolina were looking for a business they could take on as a ministry.

New owners, but the same purpose

Davis and Rachael Carman are in their second decade of homeschooling their seven children. Davis is an engineer, a former plant and general manager, and a vice president of North Carolinians for Home Education, the state’s largest homeschool association. Rachael is a published author and a popular speaker for homeschooling conventions and women’s retreats. They had talked with their friend Zan Tyler, an editor with Broadman & Holman Publishers, about their interest in starting or purchasing a homeschool-related business. Zan knew Dr. Wile was looking for a buyer, and offered to introduce them.

Davis said he’d already met Dr. Wile at NCHE’s conference, and they immediately hit it off. “The first phone call turned into three hours,” Davis said, and the two found they shared a heart for ministering to homeschoolers.

Wile said that’s crucial to maintain the distinctive strengths of Apologia. “This company cannot exist as a ‘big box’ publisher,” he said. “It requires a lot of support, and as a ministry, it has a lower bottom line than a big publisher. It takes people who are trained to address the different needs of homeschoolers. It is an individual thing and because of that, we have to have contact with the individual to know how to help him.”

After much negotiation, the sale was completed this past June. Some things are not changing – Davis said that Dr. Wile will stay with Apologia to do the things he loves, writing and speaking about science. The company's headquarters will remain in Indiana, while Davis and his family will continue to live in Waxhaw, N.C., near Charlotte. “As a homeschool father, my dream of working in a home office is now a reality,” Davis said.

Other things are changing – their mutual friend Zan Tyler has joined the company as its acquisitions editor, and Davis plans to add new lines of inspirational and practical materials alongside the core science curriculum.

That suits Wile, though. The sale has freed him to focus on the things which he is best at providing to homeschooling families. It will “keep Apologia oriented the way it’s oriented,” he said, “and not lose touch with homeschoolers though it will continue to grow.”

And that will allow Apologia to follow the purpose that led to the first three-ring binders fourteen years ago – providing an uniquely useful approach to homeschooling science.