Rationale for Teaching an Academic Course on the Bible
A Rising Tide of Consensus
Studying about the Bible in public high school English and social
studies classes is both academically valuable and legally grounded. In
1999, The Bible in Public Schools: A First Amendment Guide was
compiled and endorsed by a diverse coalition of 21 prominent
educational, religious, and civil liberty organizations, including the
National School Boards Association. This document provides guidelines
for teaching a legal, academic course about the Bible in public schools.
Such courses offer great academic value because the Bible has had a
timeless influence on literature, culture, and public discourse.
Furthermore, non-devotional teaching about the Bible has a firm legal
foundation, and classroom materials to ensure that these courses are
taught effectively and appropriately are now in use nationwide.
1. Consensus on the Academic Value of Teaching a Course on the
Bible: In four major studies, educators at the secondary and
post-secondary levels reported that the Bible is key to a good
education.
- College English department chairs were asked what they wished
incoming freshmen had read. The most frequently named work was the
Bible. (Juhasz and Wilson, “Should students be well read or should
they read well?” NASSP Bulletin 70(488):78-83.)
- In a 1997 study, 81 percent of high school English teachers
surveyed reported it was important to teach some Bible literature. (Wachlin,
“The Place of Bible Literature in Public High School English
Classes,” Research in the Teaching of English 31(1): 7-49.)
- In 2005, 98 percent of high school English teachers surveyed
agreed Bible literacy was academically advantageous. (Bible
Literacy Report, 2005)
- In a 2006 study, English professors from America’s top-rated
schools -- Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Texas A&M, UC-Berkeley
and others -- were interviewed on the need for basic literacy in the
Bible. No professor disagreed that “Regardless of a person’s faith,
an educated person needs to know the Bible.” The professors said the
Bible is “indispensable,” provides “great advantage,” and is
“absolutely crucial.” (Bible Literacy Report II, 2006)
TIME Magazine described this growing consensus in a cover
story titled “Why We Should Teach the Bible in Public School.” (April 2,
2007, page 40.) The article states that the Bible is the “bedrock of
Western culture.”
Stephen Prothero, chair of Boston University’s religion department,
in his book Religious Literacy: What Everyone Needs to Know and
Doesn’t (Harper San Francisco, 2007) argues that everyone needs to
grasp Bible basics. Prothero approvingly cites the argument that
students “can’t be effective citizens (or neighbors) if they don’t know
something about the Bible” (2007, pp. 132-134). English teachers and
professors agree that American literature is steeped with Biblical
allusions, Biblical symbols, and Biblical archetypes. The works of
Shakespeare contain over 1,300 documented Bible references and
allusions. The 2002 Advanced Placement study guide, AP Literature and
Composition: Preparing for the Advanced Placement Examination (Bevilacqua,
Israel, & Timoney) listed 108 characters and events that are “common
allusions in poetry and prose.” The majority of characters and events on
this list are Biblical.
2. Consensus on the Bible’s Timeless Influence: Writing for
The New Yorker, Daniel Radosh noted, “The familiar observation that
the Bible is the best-selling book of all time obscures a more startling
fact: the Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year.
Calculating how many Bibles are sold in the United States is a virtually
impossible task, but a conservative estimate is that in 2005 Americans
purchased some 25 million Bibles—twice as many as the most recent Harry
Potter book.” Cultural literacy demands knowledge of the Bible.
Reference books such as Coined by God (Malless, 2003), The New
Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (Hirsch, Kett, & Trefil, 2002), Brush up
Your Bible (Macrone, 1993), I Never Knew That Was in the Bible (Manser,
1999), Everyday Biblical Literacy (Lang, 2007), and others
catalogue the literally hundreds of Bible phrases, characters, place
names, and symbols that have become the common currency of Western
culture. According to E.D. Hirsch, Biblical terms are used with the
assumption that a culturally literate person understands the Biblical
reference (Hirsch, Kett, & Trefil, 2002, p. 1).
3. Consensus that Teaching About the Bible has a Firm Legal
Foundation: Supreme Court opinions support academic study of the
Bible in public schools. The Bible study landmark case is Abington
Township School District v. Schempp. In the Schempp majority
opinion, Justice Tom C. Clark wrote, “Nothing we have said here
indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented
objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be
effected consistently with the First Amendment. It certainly may be said
that the Bible is worthy of study” for its literary and historical
qualities (1963, p. 225). That decision has been tested over the years
to the conclusion that any course that teaches the Bible academically,
that provides an awareness of the religious content of the Bible while
not promoting religion, and that does not require conformity to beliefs
encountered in the study of the Bible is legally acceptable in public
education.
4. Availability of Materials to Support Constitutional Bible
Courses: The 1999 publication of The Bible and Public Schools
has provided the educational community with a cogent guide for every
aspect of teaching an academic course on the Bible; including the
preparation of materials, the training of teachers, and the development
of textbooks and teacher’s editions. Such materials have been and are
being developed. Most notable among these is the complete curriculum
provided in The Bible and Its Influence (BLP Publishing © 2006)
-- a textbook program that provides an overview of the content of the
entire Bible and its impact on literature, culture, and public life.
This curriculum is supported by a teacher’s edition and an online
teacher-training course. This particular program was reviewed by over 40
scholars, educators, and First-Amendment experts. The TIME
Magazine cover story of April 2, 2007 stated that that “[Public school
Bible electives] should have a strong accompanying textbook on the model
of The Bible and Its Influence...”
5. Conclusion: A 2005 Chicago Tribune op-ed concluded:
“It makes no sense to starve our public school students by eliminating
the Bible and religion from the curriculum, given overwhelming interest
of students in the subject and the legal and academic support for it.
How can we be truly multicultural, in the best sense, if we do not
understand our own culture? It is impossible for us to evaluate other
ways of life without some strong understanding of the roots of our own.”
(Elshtain, 2005, p. 27) A second Chicago Tribune editorial noted,
“When [public schools] decline to impart knowledge about such an
important subject [the Bible], they are not doing anything to preserve
the separation of church and state. They are merely failing their
students.” (“Biblical Ignorance,” 2005, p. 22) To offer a rigorous
elective course about the Bible affords students a significant advantage
in current and future classes and in college preparation, provides them
with the keys to understanding history and culture, and helps equip them
for the working world and for empowered citizenship. |
