Bible Literacy Project News
School Board News: Conference Daily
Teaching the Bible as literature
Del Stover
April 12th, 2010
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How can high school students understand the
subtleties of great literature, such as To Kill a
Mockingbird, Moby Dick, The Canterbury Tales, or the
plays of Shakespeare, if they cannot recognize or
put in context the biblical references in these
works?
Can students really understand the historical and
political development of the United States without
understanding how the Bible influenced political,
social, and cultural thought of Americans from
colonial times to today?
Those questions have prompted hundreds of school
districts to implement academically rigorous, non-prosthelytizing
courses in English literature and social studies.
How some of these schools are doing that—yet avoid
potential First Amendment conflicts involved in
mixing religion and schools—was the topic of today’s
Exhibitor Workshop sponsored by the Bible Literacy
Project.
Although school boards should always consult with
their local attorneys, the bottom line is that
public schools are not barred from using the Bible
as an educational tool, said the firm’s vice
president, Deborah Hicks.
“We built [our program] in an academic way to
address the Bible’s connections to literacy and
historical documents, and the Bible’s impact on
various aspects of culture,” she said.
Several state legislatures have adopted laws
emphasizing the legal right to teach the Bible for
secular, educational purposes, and today, 365
schools in 43 states are using The Bible and Its
Influence—published by the Bible Literacy Project—in
high school courses that examine the Bible’s role in
literature or in history, Hick said. None have faced
any legal challenge or significant public
controversy.
Gaining public acceptance for these courses—and
sidestepping legal challenges—takes work, panelists
say. Bill Adkins, a consultant for the firm, said
it’s important to approve a course description and
rationale for the program that highlights its
academic value. It’s also important to make course
material available to ward off inaccurate rumors.
Also essential to any successful implementation is
the selection of a teacher who understands what’s at
stake—and who gets some training in how to teach the
course and guide students away from discussions that
stray from the academic course, he said.
“I can tell you, as a former assistant
superintendent,” Adkins said, “if I handed a Bible
to a teacher and just sent them off, I’d be scared
to death.”
Source Article
http://schoolboardnews.nsba.org/2010/04/teaching-the-bible-as-literature/
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