dallashistory

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/08/ ... urse-.html

Teach the Bible? Of course.
Public schools need not proselytize — indeed, must not — in teaching students about the Good Book.

By William R. Mattox Jr. USA Today

Quote:
Having held a successful "beer-and-nuts summit" to defuse the volatile issue of race in public life, President Obama now needs to hold a "wine-and-bread summit" to tackle the equally volatile issue of religion in public schools.

Because as millions of American children return to the classroom this month, most public schools do not know how to handle the delicate issue of what to teach students about the Bible. Just ask the Texas Board of Education, which is mired in a contentious fight over how textbooks should characterize Christianity's influence on American history.

The battle lines in the Texas shootout are familiar: One side wants to purge public schools of almost any respectful mention of religion, while the other wants the Bible to be given even more reverence in the classroom than that afforded great Americans like say, Martin Luther King Jr.

Given this stark divide, it's easy to see why some educators might be tempted to skirt this topic. Yet, to its credit, the Texas Board of Education is soldiering on, knowing that you can't effectively explore American history without teaching about the Rev. King, and that you can't teach about the civil rights leader without helping students understand the meaning and power of his frequent references to "the Promised Land" and other scriptural metaphors, verses and concepts.

Hopefully, Texas and other states can strike the right balance — and raise our nation's biblical literacy levels without engaging in religious indoctrination of one kind or another. For while people on different sides will object to the Bible being misused in the classroom, all of us on all sides ought to object to the Bible being ignored in the classroom.

"Students who want to do serious study of Western civilization need to know the Bible," says Barbara Newman, Northwestern University professor of English, Religion and Classics. "They need to know the Bible, even if they do not believe the Bible."

Professors sign on

Harvard professor Robert Kiely, for one, agrees. In 2006, he participated in an academic survey of professors from many of America's leading universities — including Yale, Princeton, Brown, Rice, California-Berkeley and Stanford. The survey — commissioned by the Bible Literacy Project, which promotes academic Bible study in public schools — found an overwhelming consensus among top professors that incoming college students need to be well-versed in the stories, themes and words of the Bible.

"If a student doesn't know any Bible literature, he or she will simply not understand whole elements of Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth. One could go on and on and on," Kiely told Concordia professor Marie Wachlin and her research team.

"Knowledge of the Bible can be a key to unlocking other subjects. . . especially literature, art, music and social studies," say Chuck Stetson, co-editor of the visually stunning high school textbook The Bible and Its Influence, and founder of the Bible Literacy Project.

And knowledge of the Bible can be a key to understanding much of today's pop culture. Like Stephen Colbert's irreverent humor on Comedy Central. Or Jim Carrey's screwball spirituality in Bruce Almighty. Or the devilishly clever title of the band White Stripes' release, Get Behind Me Satan.

Not surprisingly, students growing up in non-religious homes are often behind the curve. "Many of my students are quite secular and have very little knowledge of the Bible," Northwestern's Newman says. "This is a major disadvantage."

Indeed, Newman says that trying to appreciate biblical allusions in literature without an underlying knowledge of Scripture is like trying to appreciate a good joke when someone has to explain the punch line. You might eventually "get" the joke, she says, but by the time you do, "it's not funny anymore."

Interestingly, a 2008 study published in Sociological Quarterly found that regular church attendance positively affected students' grade point averages. And while lead researcher Jennifer Glanville of the University of Iowa attributed much of this effect to the social and psychological benefits of being enmeshed in a wider community of like-minded peers and adults, some of this effect might also be explained by the greater biblical literacy young people typically acquire by attending church.

An 'objective' approach

To stem the decline of biblical literacy, three states — Georgia, Texas and Tennessee — have passed laws in recent years calling for public high schools to offer elective courses that teach the Bible "in an objective and non-devotional manner with no attempt to indoctrinate students" (as Georgia's law puts it).

In addition, some educators have sought to shore up world religion units that too often, in Kiely's words, "go rapidly over all the Quran in one week and all of the Bible in two days."

Though these are welcome developments, Obama could give them a real boost by holding a wine-and-bread summit at the White House to legitimize Bible courses in public schools. And in a strange sort of way, such an initiative ought to please everyone.

For while true believers will no doubt hope that elective Bible courses might whet students' appetites for more, non-believers can take solace in the fact that if schools don't start doing a better job of teaching students about the Bible, many parents who want their kids to be high achievers just might start taking them to church.

William R. Mattox Jr. is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
3 ways to do it

In Abington School District v. Schempp, decided in 1963, the Supreme Court stated that "study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education," was permissible under the First Amendment. Here are three ways states have facilitated the teaching of biblical text in public schools:

• Texas, Georgia and Tennessee have passed legislation promoting historical or literary biblical studies as an elective.

• In Alabama, the state Board of Education approved The Bible and Its Influence as a textbook for public schools.

• South Carolina has passed "released time" legislation. It allows students to take (and, if the course is eligible, receive credit for) a religious class off-campus during school hours.

By Katrina Trinko
End quote.

Though these are welcome developments, Obama could give them a real boost by holding a wine-and-bread summit at the White House to legitimize Bible courses in public schools. And in a strange sort of way, such an initiative ought to please everyone.

I fully agree with the author; but I won't hold my breath waiting for Obama to encourage it. He has made quite clear his feelings as President-in-chief towards Christianity by dissing the prayer breakfasts, covering up the Ten Commandments, and otherwise removing any trace of Christianity or democracy like the bust of Churchill from his administration. Like Rehoboam and his young advisors in the Bible, it is all about the big "O"; and like them, great will eventually be the fall of him.

For those who are not Bible educated

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehoboam

According to the Hebrew Bible, Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he ascended the throne, and he reigned for seventeen years.[4] The people, led by Jeroboam, feared that Rehoboam would continue to tax them heavily - as had his father Solomon. Jeroboam and the people promised their loyalty in return for lesser burdens. The older men counseled Rehoboam to agree, but the king sought advice from the people he had grown up with; they advised him to tax the people even more, which Rehoboam did. He proclaimed to the people, "Whereas my father laid upon you a heavy yoke, so shall I add tenfold thereto. Whereas my father chastised (tortured) you with whips, so shall I chastise you with scorpions. For my littlest finger is thicker than my father's loins; and your backs, which bent like reeds at my father's touch, shall break like straws at my own touch." Jeroboam and the people angrily rebelled; the ten northern tribes broke away and formed a separate kingdom, which came to be also known as Samaria (during the time of Jesus Christ), or Ephraim (in the Book of Mormon).[5]

Quote:
According to the Hebrew Bible, Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he ascended the throne, and he reigned for seventeen years.[4] The people, led by Jeroboam, feared that Rehoboam would continue to tax them heavily - as had his father Solomon. Jeroboam and the people promised their loyalty in return for lesser burdens. The older men counseled Rehoboam to agree, but the king sought advice from the people he had grown up with; they advised him to tax the people even more, which Rehoboam did. He proclaimed to the people, "Whereas my father laid upon you a heavy yoke, so shall I add tenfold thereto. Whereas my father chastised (tortured) you with whips, so shall I chastise you with scorpions. For my littlest finger is thicker than my father's loins; and your backs, which bent like reeds at my father's touch, shall break like straws at my own touch." Jeroboam and the people angrily rebelled; the ten northern tribes broke away and formed a separate kingdom, which came to be also known as Samaria (during the time of Jesus Christ), or Ephraim (in the Book of Mormon).
End quote.

And those were the good old days. Before things got really grim.

No, thank you. Not with my school tax dollars.
I have no objection to explaining a reference to a Biblical passage in another authors work, even up to reading that passage in the classroom. I doubt that it actually comes up that often.
However Bible study classes in public schools is a whole 'nuther thing. I don't think it will be possible to teach it “"in an objective and non-devotional manner with no attempt to indoctrinate students" (as Georgia's law puts it).”
because the only people who would want to teach it are going to have an agenda, either on the left or the right. There will be untold complaints from parents about what is being taught and how. From both sides.
Religious indoctrination, whether Christian, Judaism or Islam is best left to the parents. Besides the next step, after the Bible study is allowed, will be to allow study of the Qur'an.
Why does it not surprise me that a survey commissioned by The Bible Literacy Project would come to these conclusions. Commissioned surveys are designed to satisfy the clients goals. Anything else its abject failure.
As for explaining Dr. Kings reference to “The Promised Land”, Texas kids already get it.
Paul.

There used to be Bible Credit Courses given at Churches that had High School Credit. The Final Exam was given by the Dallas School District. There was an Old Testament and a New Testament course.

Texas Public Schools Struggle to Incorporate New Requirements on Bible Literacy

Link to Article: http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/d ... 663f3.html

Article:

06:53 AM CDT on Friday, September 4, 2009
By JESSICA MEYERS / The Dallas Morning News

A new state law requires that Texas public schools incorporate Bible literacy into the curriculum, but it provides no specific guidelines, funding for materials or teacher training. So high schools are left scrambling to figure out what to teach and how to teach it.

A handful of North Texas districts are offering an elective class, but most are choosing instead to embed Old and New Testament teachings into current classes.

Such broad parameters leave one of the most controversial topics in public schools virtually unregulated, say religious scholars and confused educators. They warn that the nebulous law may have thwarted its purpose — to examine the Bible’s influence in history and literature.

“Asking a school district to teach a course or include material in a course without providing them any guidance or resources is like sending a teacher into a minefield without a map,” said Mark Chancey, an associate professor of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University and author of the report “Teaching the Bible in Texas Public Schools.”

“There’s an irony in this as well,” he said. “Teachers have to teach without the training the law requires.”

Little guidance

Legislators did create provisions to ensure that a course maintained “religious neutrality” by mandating teacher training, state-approved materials and curriculum standards considered adequate by the attorney general. But they did not specify what that training included nor did they allocate funds for it.

The state Board of Education provided little further guidance. It said the curriculum for independent studies classes in English and social studies already covered the Biblical material. And Texas Education Agency officials said they did not request funding because materials and training were already covered for those two courses.

The bill’s sponsor, Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, blames the education agency for the confusion surrounding the law.

“TEA had the duty to prepare teachers to teach the course but they neglected to request funds,” he said. “I assumed the funds were there.”

Treading carefully

Other states like Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee have wrestled with these issues, but they’ve created much clearer expectations and standards, said Steven Friesen, the UT Religious Studies professor who hosted this summer’s Bible literacy workshop.

Districts are treading carefully.

“There’s a lot of opportunity for a district to misstep,” said Dennis Muizers, Lovejoy ISD’s assistant superintendent for curriculum, instruction and assessment. “There’s quite a bit of latitude in addition to a lack of development for teachers. It’s a double-edged sword.”

That district offered a Bible in literature class last year, but since fewer than 15 students signed up this year, Lovejoy will not offer it.

Wylie ISD will also offer the course this year for the first time. Duncanville has taught it in previous years and will continue to do so this semester.

Many North Texas schools seem to be sidestepping the issue by saying they already teach the Bible when analyzing allusions in Shakespeare or discussing ancient Mesopotamia.

Frisco ISD plans to add nuggets to its World History course this spring. Irving ISD has “beefed up” its material to meet the curriculum requirement. McKinney ISD will wait until the state offers teacher training before it establishes a course, but says that religious literature is already taught in existing courses.

Dallas ISD won’t offer a class either.

“The operative word in the bill is ‘may,’.” said district spokesman Jon Dahlander.

End of Article

Bringing back a little reason might not hurt, either Not that I'm inclined toward that myself ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldHF6PFUukw

... but great minds should have the opportunity to blossom to their fullest degree ... each point of the rosette unfurled.

No, thank you. Not with my school tax dollars.
I have no objection to explaining a reference to a Biblical passage in another authors work, even up to reading that passage in the classroom. I doubt that it actually comes up that often.
However Bible study classes in public schools is a whole 'nuther thing. I don't think it will be possible to teach it “"in an objective and non-devotional manner with no attempt to indoctrinate students" (as Georgia's law puts it).”
because the only people who would want to teach it are going to have an agenda, either on the left or the right. There will be untold complaints from parents about what is being taught and how. From both sides.
Religious indoctrination, whether Christian, Judaism or Islam is best left to the parents. Besides the next step, after the Bible study is allowed, will be to allow study of the Qur'an.

I agree-- though tax dollars have nothing to do with my considerations.

As for teaching "reason" --hell yes!
A little critical thinking skill would not hurt either.

IMO The important thing would be to inform students without undermining the student's family's values.