25% of Texas districts are using Bible-heavy reading lessons in public elementary schools

The new state-sanctioned, Christianity-infused Bluebonnet curriculum is being used in over 300 of the state's 1,207 districts

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After Texas Republicans narrowly passed a Bible-heavy reading and language arts curriculum for public schools, more than 300 schools now say they’re using it, if for no other reason than to take advantage of the taxpayer funds that come along with it.

I wrote about this curriculum last November, but it’s worth exploring why it’s so awful before getting into how it’s being used today.

In 2023, Republican lawmakers passed HB 1605, a bill (projected to cost the state more than $731 million over two years) that directed the Texas Education Agency to develop instructional materials that aligned with state standards. This would, in theory, be a huge benefit for cash-strapped districts because they wouldn’t have to purchase separate textbooks from outside companies anymore. While public schools wouldn’t be forced to use this material, they would at least have that option.

But the state also dangled a carrot in front of districts: We’ll give you up to $60 per student if you use our resources. It would be very hard for low-income districts to pass that up.

Whether or not this was a good use of state dollars was up for debate. Critics said the money would have been better spent on raising teachers’ salaries in order to attract better educators to the field. In any case, later that year, the State Board of Education posted drafts of the new material online—including the English Language Arts and Reading material for students in Kindergarten through Grade 5—so that the public could weigh in before the material was finalized.

One of the big takeaways? This material was infused with Christianity.

Bible in a backpack (image via Shutterstock)

According to The 74, an outlet that covers education, this was largely because right-wing groups played a significant role in developing the curriculum:

While largely hidden from public view, the redesign sparked behind-the-scenes debate long before its release. When a leading curriculum publisher balked at the state’s request to infuse its offerings with biblical content, Texas officials turned to other vendors. They include conservative Christian Hillsdale College in Michigan and the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation, which supported an unsuccessful effort to require the 10 Commandments in every classroom, according to a list obtained by The 74.

So how bad did it all get?

Here were just two examples of how conservatives worked the Bible into the material in a way that allowed them to claim plausible deniability when accused of violating church/state separation.

The material for 5th graders included a unit on “Juneteenth and Beyond” where students were supposed to read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” King wrote the now-famous letter after he was arrested during a non-violent protest and after several white clergy members urged Black Americans to just be patient and fight racism through the courts.

King responded, “For years now I have heard the word ‘wait.’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This ‘wait’ has almost always meant ‘never.’” He also quoted the line, “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” In the middle of the letter, he said that his form of protest was hardly a new approach:

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience.

In the Book of Daniel, the characters Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into a furnace because they weren’t bowing down to an image of the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar II. But when the king looked to see them burned up, he noticed four figures… one of whom appeared to be “like a son of God.” The three other men were unharmed.

How significant were those biblical references in the King letter? Not significant at all. They were just one of many, many allusions made throughout the piece. The Wikipedia article for the letter doesn’t even mention them once. When people talk about King’s letter, those biblical characters do not come up because the bigger picture of what King is saying is so much more important.

But not to the curriculum writers in Texas. They saw an opening.

In the student activity book accompanying this unit, kids are asked to write a short response to the question, “Why did Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reference the story of Daniel in his ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’?”

They could have asked any number of similar questions: Why did King reference Socrates and Aristotle? Why did King bring up Brown v. Board of Education? Why did King mention Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln? Instead, the big takeaway for the Christians writing this curriculum was to make sure kids understood the biblical reference.

Sure, understanding the Bible story helps make sense of what King is saying in that single sentence, but it’s hardly necessary. And yet Texas education Commissioner Mike Morath felt it was vital:

“If you don’t know who Nebuchadnezzar is, you don’t know what [King’s] talking about,” Morath said. “How do you make sure that you can unlock in the minds of our kids their ability to wrestle with … ideas that have surfaced in great works of literature?”

You could absolutely figure out what King was saying without knowing that Bible reference.

But you could see what they were doing here. They used a minor reference to the Bible and blew it up in order to centralize it within a discussion of King.

A separate document provided by state officials included a lengthy account of the Bible story in order to hammer home the point conservative Christians wanted kids to take away from this unit: “To understand King, one must also understand his religious references.”

It was nothing more than a Sunday School sermon wedged into a unit about King. What could have been explained in a single paragraph (as I did above) was expanded into six pages of Bible storytelling.

In addition to that, nothing in the entire unit, as far as I could tell, suggested that many racists were inspired by their Christian faith to maintain segregation. Instead, students were only told that “many leaders of the civil rights movement were motivated by their Christian faith.” That’s true, but it’s definitely not the entire story, and leaving out the other side ignores a very salient point.

That was just one example. Here’s another.

A 2nd Grade lesson about “Fighting for the Cause” introduced students to “ordinary people who stood up for what they believed in and who fought for a cause, even when faced with immeasurable odds.” That sounded wonderful! The leaders mentioned in the unit included Jackie Robinson, Dolores Huerta, Rosa Parks… and the biblical character Queen Esther.

The Bible said Esther saved the Jewish people by foiling a plot to eradicate them, which is why she was included in this unit… but unlike everyone else, there was no evidence she ever actually existed. Students were never told that. Her story was given the same treatment as the one of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on a bus:

It didn’t stop there. In the packet of images meant to be used in the unit, there were actual pictures of freedom fighters like Dr. Héctor P. Garcia and Cesar Chavez. And there were paintings of historical figures William Penn and William Wilberforce. Esther, who didn’t actually exist, received a similar treatment. In fact, it was implied we know what she looked like because here she is:

The teacher’s notes never mentioned that this image, clipped from an 1878 painting by Edwin Long, was not the result of a portrait session but rather conjured up out of thin air because she wasn’t real. The notes went on to say the Bible described Esther as someone “who was chosen by the king of Persia to be queen”… as if her mention in the Bible proved it.

You get the idea. Throughout these lessons, Christianity was treated as fact. The Bible’s characters were not referred to as characters but rather as real people in history. And whenever the faith could be shoved into a lesson, it was.

In a 5th Grade lesson on the Renaissance, a section on Leonardo da Vinci became a launching pad for a lesson on The Last Supper… and what the Bible says about it:

From the Teacher’s Notes about the Renaissance unit

From the Teacher’s Notes about the Renaissance unit

There’s a very good argument that could be made for teaching children about the Bible in the name of cultural literacy. Without knowing the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, for example, you may miss out on a lot of references made in literature, art, and pop culture. But if that’s the goal, then it’s imperative to tell students the Bible is a work of fiction—or at least to treat it objectively instead of as historical fact. It would also be important, then, to focus primarily on the biggest Bible stories and not B-plot characters just for the sake of telling their stories.

One professor who spoke to The 74 expressed that very concern:

“It is reasonable to devote some attention to [the Bible], and state education standards across the nation often require such attention,” said Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “The problem, of course, is that sometimes the legitimate reason of cultural literacy is used as a smokescreen to hide religious and ideological agendas.”

That’s what we were seeing here, over and over: a religious agenda masquerading as broad-based education. Hell, a poetry unit for fifth graders included poems by Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams and… The Book of Psalms. CNN reported, “No other texts from religious books would be included in the unit.”

This was also the result of complaints from conservative parents who, according to The 74, said the previous curriculum offered by the company Amplify emphasized mythology over Christianity. (The irony was apparently lost on them.)

State officials asked Amplify to provide a lesson on the story of Esther and suggested a unit on Exodus, said Alexandra Walsh, the company’s chief product officer.

While it had previously tweaked its curriculum for other states, Walsh said the company had never been asked to add biblical material. And when it suggested inserting content from other world religions, the state rejected the idea, said Amplify spokeswoman Kristine Frech.

“There was not much appetite for a variety of wisdom texts,” she said. “There was much more of an appetite for the tie to traditional Christian texts.”

So Texas ditched Amplify and began working with right-wing groups like the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Hillsdale. And this is what they developed.

Interestingly enough, The 74 pointed out that Texas was already offering high school students elective courses on the Bible. Those, too, would be legal as long as they were taught objectively (which they are not). But here’s the thing: Those classes were extremely unpopular. “Just over 1,200 of the state’s 1.7 million high school students took the course this year,” the article said.

Since that plan to indoctrinate students didn’t work, Texas lawmakers were looking for another way to do it, and this time, instead of waiting for high school students to choose a class on the Bible, they shoved the Bible into an entire elementary-level curriculum.

The new Bible-infused curriculum—known as the "Bluebonnet Learning" curriculum—was eventually adopted. (It wasn’t a good sign that one of the companies contributing to the new material was founded by Mike Huckabee.)

And now we know just how popular the new curriculum is.

According to the Texas Tribune, roughly 300 public and charter schools, representing about 25% of public school districts in the state, say they plan to use the Bluebonnet curriculum.

The Tribune obtained data through an open records request on the schools planning to use the [Texas Education Agency’s] new Bluebonnet curriculum, which includes the religion-infused reading lessons as well as phonics and math materials.

According to the data, about 595 districts and charters signed up as of late June to use at least some parts of the curriculum, and about 317 said they would use the reading lessons.

The silver lining here is that many of those school districts openly admitted they’re doing this because of the financial perks, to align with state standards, and to avoid the most severe repercussions if their students don’t perform as needed on standardized tests. They’re not adopting the curriculum because of the infusion of Christianity.

But does that mean they’ll teach the lessons with religious messaging? Or will they just skip over those parts and teach students something useful instead?

It’s too early to tell. Skipping those sections is an option, though.

The religious references only make up a fraction of the reading curriculum, and using Bluebonnet does not necessarily mean a school plans to teach biblical lessons in their classrooms. They could, for example, ignore any chapters that reference Christianity and other religions. Or they could choose to heavily lean on the biblical lessons while using another curriculum for other teachings.

More than one district said they would skip the reading sections in the Bluebonnet lessons because they just weren’t at the level they needed to be:

Sandy Denning, an associate superintendent who oversees curriculum for the Keene Independent School District, told the Tribune that Bluebonnet’s reading materials currently do not meet the level of rigor the district wants. She did not point to any specific parts but described the problem as “across the board.”

When you ask religious zealots to craft a reading curriculum, we shouldn’t be surprised that they dumb it down so much that veteran educators refuse to waste their students’ time with it.

It would be bad enough if Texas lawmakers just wasted money on a shitty curriculum. Instead, they have once again weaponized public education to advance a religious ideology. This is Christian Nationalism in its purest form: using government to promote one religion.

Texas Republicans aren’t doing any of the proven things that help students, like raising teacher pay or addressing inequities. Just as they do with all their other problems, conservatives are throwing the Bible at the issue, hoping (and praying) it’ll work like magic. (It won’t.)

They’ll eventually claim this plan is a success because of all the districts adopting the new curriculum, but when you ask administrators why they’re using Bluebonnet, the truth comes out. It has nothing to do with the religious elements and everything to do with the bribes and threats lawmakers have pushed on them.

Yet that’s the best-case scenario here. The worst-case scenario is that students treat their education like Sunday School, accepting what they’re told but never thinking critically about it. If this works, Texas Republicans aren’t going to stop at Bible stories slipped into reading lessons. They’ll rewrite the curriculum in other areas too, to fulfill their religious mission.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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