Wanna Be a Steader!

Ohio Homeschool Dad on HSLDA's Homeschool Heartbeat Radio Show

Ohio homeschool dad, Jay Ryan (a.k.a. homeschoolblogger/jayfromcleveland) is this week’s guest on HSLDA’s radio segment “Homeschool Heartbeat.”  Jay has a fabulous curriculum on Classical Astronomy (Signs & Seasons: Understanding the Elements of Classical Astronomy) that you can either purchase directly through him and through HSLDA.  Below is Jay’s bio and the transcripts of this week’s shows!  Enjoy. 

Blessings, Kim Wolf<><

Jay Ryan

Jay has a bachelor’s degree in physics, but in 1995 he began learning and writing on astronomy. Jay has studied at length the “great books” of astronomy, including works by Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Kopernik, Galileo, Kepler and Newton.

For five years, he was a contributing editor to Sky & Telescope magazine, creating the SkyWise comic strip. He is also the author of Cycles: An Introduction to Astronomy and Time, an educational comic book used in high schools and colleges around the United States and beyond, with over 40,000 copies currently in print.

Jay now devotes his work to the greater glory of God, for the benefit of Christian readers, particularly homeschoolers. Since 2002, he has written the Classical Astronomy Update, an email newsletter for Christian homeschool families as well as astronomy and other homeschool-related articles for Homeschooling Today, Homeschool Enrichment, and The Old Schoolhouse.

He is a frequent contributor to the homeschool channel at Crosswalk.com. His article “The Astronomy of Easter” was picked as one of the Crosswalk Top 6 homeschool articles for 2006.

Monday, Sept. 17, 2007

The Biblical Basis for Astronomy

Mike Farris:
My guest this week is Jay Ryan. He’s the author of a homeschool curriculum called Signs and Seasons: Understanding the Elements of Classical Astronomy. Jay and his wife Debbie have five kids and they operate Fourth Day Press in Cleveland, Ohio. Jay, welcome to the program.

Jay Ryan:
Thanks Mike, it’s great to be here.

Mike:
Jay, can you explain to our listeners the biblical basis for classical astronomy?

Jay:
We read in Genesis 1:14 that God made the Sun, Moon and stars “for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.” So the Lord made them to tell time. Calendar keeping is a very practical and Biblical purpose for the celestial bodies.

In the Bible, Israel was instructed to follow a lunar calendar. Each month began with the New Moon, which was the first sighting of the waxing crescent Moon in the evening sky. The major Hebrew feasts were timed with the phases of the Moon. For example, Passover was the first Full Moon of spring. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus would have been under the light of the Full Moon, as accurately depicted in The Passion of the Christ.

Later, the early Christians developed a church calendar that included the Hebrew lunar calendar and the civil solar calendar. This eventually became the basis of the Gregorian calendar, which we still use throughout the world today.

Mike:
Jay, thanks so much, I look forward to talking to you tomorrow. I’m Mike Farris.

Tuesday, Sept. 18^th, 2007

What is Classical Astronomy?

Mike Farris:
Jay, you’ve described classical astronomy as important, but a neglected part of our American heritage. Can you give a few examples of the role that classical astronomy played in the education of the Founding Fathers?

Jay Ryan:
Well Mike, classical astronomy was prominent with the Puritan colonists of Massachusetts. It was a big part of the classical curriculum at Harvard during the 17th century, along with Hebrew and Greek, and logic and rhetoric. This was back when that school was a pastor’s college. Creating an astronomical almanack was a requirement for a master’ degree, and the 20-year-old Cotton Mather wrote the 1683 edition.

The Harvard almanac was the first English publication in America, and it was printed in 1639, before the Bay Psalm Book. Everyone in the American colonies used classical astronomy to find the times of planting and harvest. It is said that an astronomical almanac was in every colonial home, along with the Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress.

Many of our Founding Fathers were almanack makers, including Benjamin Franklin. The astronomical almanacks also included other useful information, along with essays and poetry that form the foundation of American literature. Unfortunately, the understanding of classical astronomy declined in the 19th century, so that today an almanac simply means a compendium of miscellaneous information.

Mike:
Jay, that’s fascinating information. I look forward to talk to you more tomorrow astronomy. I’m Mike Farris.

Wednesday, Sept. 19^th, 2007

History vs. Folklore

 Mike Farris:
Jay, for some homeschool parents, the topic of astronomy is confusing because of the influence of myth and folklore—why is astronomy so often confused with astrology?

Jay Ryan:
Mike, basically, astronomy is a science and astrology is a superstition that steals from science.

Astronomy is the actual study of the Sun, Moon and stars—objects that the Lord has placed in the heavens. Classical astronomy includes predicting the motions and positions of these celestial bodies. This information has always been used for telling time and for finding direction.

However, astrology is nothing more than a thief that steals from astronomy. Astrology uses terminology and elements from legitimate astronomy in a failed attempt to find meaning in the positions of the Sun, Moon, and planets. This is an ancient deception based on the pagan philosophy and flawed pseudoscience of the ancient Greeks.

The fact is, it doesn’t mean anything when, say, Saturn or Venus lines up with the Moon. This is simply the view we see from the Earth as these bodies follow their God-ordained motions.

Nonetheless, these sights can be very beautiful and can fill us with praise for the Creator who placed them in the night sky.

Mike:
Jay, thanks so much, I look forward to talking to you tomorrow. I’m Mike Farris.

Thursday, Sept. 20^th, 2007

A Visual Understanding of the Sky

Mike Farris:
Classical astronomy can be a great way to teach children math and science. Jay, what are some of the key differences between classical and modern astronomy?

Jay Ryan:
Well Mike, it would be nearly impossible for students to reproduce and confirm the methods of modern astronomy, but the methods of classical astronomy are easily within reach.

For modern astronomy, students cannot easily conduct a spectrographic analysis of starlight. It would be extremely difficult to use that information to infer the chemical composition of stars and extrapolate theories. The student of modern astronomy learns very little except to receive theoretical conclusions on the authority of the science mainstream.

However, with traditional classical astronomy, the sky can be studied using simple geometrical instruments. This enables accurate timekeeping and navigation from the sky, as it had been done for centuries before modern technology. For example, a student can directly verify the traditional proofs that the Earth is spherical, which have been known for thousands of years.

In this way, students can learn the scientific method from a concrete science that yields tangible results, and this is in contrast to the inferred, speculative conclusions presented in support of evolutionary theories.

Mike:
Thank you, Jay. I know our listeners are very interested in what you had to say today, and they’ll be back tomorrow. I’m Mike Farris.

Friday, Sept. 21^st, 2007

Signs & Seasons

Mike Farris:
Jay, in your homeschooling curriculum Signs & Seasons, you talk about the “science of direct observation.” Can you explain what you mean by that and how it ties into appreciating God’s creation?

Jay Ryan:
Well, Mike, when I was a student in public school, we read about science read about science in books and we were tested on what we read. And at the higher grades, the courses included lab work. But somehow, I failed to make a connection between this approach and the real world.

In Signs & Seasons, the entire course is directed to learning the sky, and God’s creation becomes the classroom. Students will learn to measure the passage of the Sun during the day and understand how this changes across the four seasons. They will learn to follow the daily and seasonal motions of the stars, and understand the elements of how to tell the time of day and the time of year from observing the sky.

The students can measure the progression of the Moon’s phases over the course of the lunar month. They can confirm with their own eyes when the Moon will line up with the bright stars and planets. They can learn the traditional methods of keeping the calendar, and come to appreciate how our methods of tracking the days, months, and years are historically taken from the cycles of the sun and moon.

In this way, we hope that a new generation will rediscover the Lord’s purpose for creating the sun, moon, and stars, as we read in Genesis 1:14.

Mike:
Jay, I know a lot of people are going to be interested in your book, that it’s available at www.classicalastronomy.com. I encourage people to go look at your website. I’m Mike Farris.