Hollywood movie house launches free curriculum for home-school families

Pure Flix, the Christian entertainment company behind the “God’s Not Dead” feature film franchise, recently unveiled a new effort to offer free educational resources to families who home-school their children.

The company, which also owns and operates the PureFlix.com faith and family streaming service — a Christian effort based on the Netflix model — recently announced the release of a free, four-week curriculum for home-schooling families.

The kit provides parents and children with thousands of films and documentaries that focus on the Bible, science, government, history and other relevant subjects, with a weekly email guiding recipients through suggested content available on the Pure Flix platform.

Greg Gudorf, CEO of Pure Flix Digital, said the company launched the effort after spending months listening to the needs of home-school families.

“Based on that feedback, we decided to launch this initiative and use our videos to help them and their children,” Gudorf said in a statement.

The goal is to offer viable content that can complement what students are currently learning in their home educational programs.

“Pure Flix’s Keep the Faith movement makes it easy to supplement your Christian home-school curriculum with full access to its library of thousands of documentaries and videos on science, history, animals, government and more,” Pure Flix’s home-school website proclaims.

The company said in a statement that the number of home-school families has grown over the past few years, presenting a potentially robust audience for the company to court with its massive collection of faith and family-friendly content.

“The growth has been phenomenal and shows no signs of slowing down,” Gudorf said of the increase in home-schooling families.

Pure Flix gained widespread attention with the company’s 2014 film “God’s Not Dead” — a movie with a $2 million budget that became a box office success, raking in more than $60 million in sales.

The film, which had a plot that relied heavily on faith, sent a signal to Hollywood that a sizable American audience is craving family friendly and faith-based content. Pure Flix’s home-school effort is an extension of that realization.

While the National Center for Education Statistics estimates that just 3 percent of school-age Americans are home-schooled, there’s no doubt that a segment of that population is passionate about upholding morals and values, making it a viable group for Pure Flix, considering the company’s aim.

These shared values become even more apparent when examining National Center for Education Statistics, which include indicators surrounding why parents choose to teach their children at home.

“In the 2011–12 school year, 91 percent of home-schooled students had parents who said that a concern about the environment of other schools was an important reason for home-schooling their child, which was a higher percentage than other reasons listed,” the U.S. government reported.

Back in May, Gudorf told “The Church Boys” podcast that he believes both the success of “God’s Not Dead” as well as the popularity of the streaming service offer some important lessons to Hollywood elite.

“I think the lesson to take away if you’re on the Hollywood side of things is look at what people are watching and asking for,” he said. “There’s been a resurgence of faith and family oriented programming. People want that.”

Listen to Gudorf discuss faith and family programming here.

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