The Texas Board of Education plans to force kids to read the Bible in public schools
A new state-sanctioned reading list smuggles Christian doctrine into classrooms under the guise of a literary canon
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Texas is on the verge of forcing kids to read the Bible in public school.
On Wednesday, the State Board of Education expressed support for a plan that would make certain Bible passages part of a larger required reading curriculum. It’s part of a proposal to institute an official Texas literary canon at each grade level. Rather than having school districts and teachers decide which books would be best for their students to read, the proposal would require certain texts to be assigned from kindergarten onward.
Plenty of the items make sense: Under the proposal, for example, Kindergarten teachers would read aloud books like “The Cat in the Hat” and various nursery rhymes. Sixth graders would read the play “The Miracle Worker” (about Helen Keller) and S.E. Hinton’s “The Outsiders,” among other works. The high school curriculum would include books like “The Great Gatsby” and “The Scarlet Letter.”
But included in the mix are Bible passages:
Also included are three Bible-infused readings drawn from the state’s controversial Bluebonnet Learning curriculum: “The Golden Rule” in kindergarten, “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” in first grade, and "The Road to Damascus" in third grade.
The readings get more specific as students get older. Seventh graders would have to read “The Shepherd's Psalm (Book of Psalms, Chapter 23)” from the Old Testament along with “The Definition of Love” from 1 Corinthians 13. High schoolers would be reading Genesis 11:1-9 about the Tower of Babel, Lamentations 3, and the story of David and Goliath as told in 1 Samuel 17.
There’s an argument to be made that there are secular benefits to teaching kids about Christianity. There are also certain Bible stories that any culturally literate person would know. Many of the passages in the proposal, after all, are tied to other (secular) books that make references to them.
But what makes this proposal so damning is that Christianity is the only religious book included in the required readings, and even the more secular stories are infused with more direct religious messages. (That’s on top of the state-sanctioned curriculum itself, which is already Bible-heavy.)
Consider the Golden Rule. That’s a pretty universal message, right? Of course we want to teach kindergartners to treat others the way they want to be treated. That’s not a Jesus Original™ by any means, but it’s a fine moral message.
But if you go to the actual lesson that the Texas Board of Education has released, as part of the overly Christian Bluebonnet curriculum, you can see that the message is really part of a larger attempt to teach kids that the Bible is amazing.
What is the Golden Rule?
Several books of the Christian Bible describe a man who lived a long, long time ago—nearly 2,000 years ago—in a part of the world that is very far from here. The man was named Jesus. One of the books of the Bible describes Jesus giving a talk atop a small mountain. During this talk he wanted to share some very important lessons, so he climbed the mountain and spoke to a group of people who were gathered to hear him. The talks Jesus gave were called sermons.
Because Jesus shared this sermon up on a mountain, this talk is called “the Sermon on the Mount.[”] The Sermon on the Mount included many different lessons. Some of these included do not judge others; do not seek revenge, or try to get even with someone; and give to the needy.
Beyond the Sermon on the Mount, there are many rules included throughout the Christian Bible. Jesus said that the Golden Rule sums up all of the important teachings from scripture. “So in everything, do unto others as you would have done unto you.”
We can apply the idea of treating others the way we wish to be treated to many situations in our everyday lives. For example, if you saw someone sitting alone at lunch, what could you do to treat that person as you would wish to be treated?…
Why is all that context about Jesus necessary to teach children that they should follow the Golden Rule? It’s not. But this is how an otherwise innocuous lesson is being used as a Trojan horse for more direct proselytizing. (It’s not until the very end of that lesson that the text mentions how other religions “including Hinduism and Islam” also follow some version of the Golden Rule, but the implication is that those religions got the idea from Christianity.)
The Houston Chronicle says there are “Ten excerpts from the Old and New Testaments… dispersed throughout” the proposal. And while the law allows parents to remove their children from religious lessons, the way this program is structured, that might be a problem for the students:
Though parents would likely be able to opt their children out of reading religious texts, the reading list will become part of Texas’ English standards and therefore used to write standardized tests, which could make the readings unavoidable, critics said.
“This list represents another step by the state toward turning public schools into Sunday schools that undermine the right of parents to direct the religious education of their own children,” said Carisa Lopez, deputy director of the advocacy group Texas Freedom Network, in a statement Wednesday.
At least one member of the Board is already making very clear that this proposal is really about getting the Bible in front of kids, not getting secular lessons that may appear in the Bible in front of them. Brandon Hall, one of the Board members, wrote this on Facebook just before the recent meeting:
Today, the Texas State Board of Education will vote on a proposal to add Bible passages to a required reading list for K–12 students across the state. This would bring the Word of God back into schools in a meaningful way for the first time in decades. We need prayer warriors to intercede for this vote.
Oops. He said the quiet part out loud.
(Side note: The “Word of God” was never taken out of public schools and therefore doesn’t need to be brought back into them.)
It’s possible the proposed reading list will change in the coming weeks. Right now, it’s far too long of a list and there’s no way teachers could get through everything, especially if they want students to learn anything beyond the required reading. (Like more books written by people who aren’t white men.)
The Chronicle notes that there’s also an alternative proposal on the table that would remove the biblical texts but still allow for readings that explain the stories of “Noah’s Ark” and “Adam & Eve” without any Bible-thumping involved. That might be fine! But that’s clearly not what most Republicans are aiming for. They don’t care if kids are culturally literate regarding the Bible; they just want those kids to accept the Bible as true.
That’s the messed up part about this. The Texas Board of Education is shoving explicitly Christian narratives into a mandatory, state-sanctioned reading list and pretending it’s objective when it comes to religion. They want to privilege one (and only one) religion at the expense of all others, treating biblical stories as if they’re foundational truths and the default moral framework for everyone, regardless of their families’ beliefs.
That’s why people in Texas should object loudly to what’s happening. Once these readings are baked into the state standards, it’s so much harder to opt out of them. What the Board is doing should alarm anyone who believes in actual religious freedom—and the right of local school districts to have some control (beyond minimum, sensible state standards) of what students should learn.
For now, the Board voted to punt all decisions on the reading list to April. Whatever they eventually approve won’t go into effect until 2030, which would give textbook publishers and standardized test makers time to incorporate the reading list into their material.
This is grotesquely unconstitutional. The people putting this forward would go out of their tiny little minds at the mere suggestion children were to read from the Koran. Our secular government cannot choose one religion over another, and the public schools are a subdivision of government. The religious right NEVER stops trying to force their religion into the public schools. What they are too dim to grasp is that it is a tacit admission of just how weak their claims are that they need to force feed them to children before they've reached the age of reason.
How would they feel if many of the stories that students are required to read are from the Quran, the Jewish version of the Old Testament, the Buddhist Sutras, the Hindu text, and so much more?
There's far more religious writings to look at than just the Bible, you know?