No, Oklahoma Schools are Not Required to Teach the Bible
Stop. Lying. To. People.
*sigh*
I refuse to read the MSM pieces about Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters telling schools to incorporate the Bible in their lessons. The headlines alone gaslight people.
No, Walters did NOT instruct teachers to teach the Bible in the way so many assume. You use it as a source!
“The Bible is an indispensable historical and cultural touchstone,” said Walters. “Without basic knowledge of it, Oklahoma students are unable to properly contextualize the foundation of our nation which is why Oklahoma educational standards provide for its instruction. This is not merely an educational directive but a crucial step in ensuring our students grasp the core values and historical context of our country.”
Also, weaving the Bible into lessons is crucial to many literature and history classes.
Walters’ press statement reveals more (emphasis mine):
The Bible is one of the most historically significant books and a cornerstone of Western civilization, along with the Ten Commandments. They will be referenced as an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like, as well as for their substantial influence on our nation’s founders and the foundational principles of our Constitution.
It’s not just our history. Governments throughout history used the Bible as a ruling device.
I majored in English literature and minored in history. My concentration was the Renaissance. Thank goodness for a Bible as Literature class, which enhanced my understanding and critical thinking when reading Paradise Lost and a handful of Shakespeare plays. I even understood more of the symbolism in “Young Goodman Brown.”
Hamlet. Grapes of Wrath. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Even Lord of the Flies.
I wish I had basic Bible knowledge when I had to read most of those stories in high school.
It is also important to know the history of the period when the authors wrote most books: Paradise Lost and the English Civil War. Well, the time periods you study in your history classes, the governments, and civilian life are centered around the Bible.
How…how do you teach the Protestant Reformation without bringing in the Bible? How do you teach the Crusades without bringing in the Bible? How do you teach Henry VIII without bringing in the Bible?
For crying out loud…you NEED to know the Bible to understand the Puritans and Salem Witch Trials!
Whether you like it or not, the Bible influenced many of our Founding Fathers.
The Founders were brilliant in using the Creator instead of God because they knew that not everyone had the same religious beliefs.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
But that doesn’t mean the Bible didn’t impact them. I mean:
Convention delegates occasionally invoked the Bible in surprising and interesting ways. During debate on the qualifications for public office, the venerable Benjamin Franklin spoke in opposition to any proposal that, in his words, “tended to debase the spirit of the common people. … We should remember the character which the Scripture requires in Rulers.” He then invoked Jethro’s advice to Moses regarding qualifications for prospective Israelite rulers, “that they should be men hating covetousness” (Exodus 18:21). Significantly, Franklin appealed to a biblical standard in this debate on a substantive provision, informing his audience in unambiguous language that his source was “Scripture,” and then he referenced a specific biblical text.
It is necessary to have Biblical knowledge for these lessons.
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Comments
OK should allow drag queen story time, but only can read from the Bible.
This is going to be SO controversial, in part because people don’t read the Bible any better than they read the Constitution.
So I’m just going to drop this here, a piece of American literature than cannot be understood without reference to the Bible.
https://www.cs.umd.edu/~mvz/bible/ltrs-from-earth.pdf
“The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”
Not a great example, as it was written deliberately as Christian apologia. I’ve gotten no fewer than five emails in the past two weeks from Hillsdale College reminding me of that very fact.
A working knowledge of the Bible as a literary/cultural reference is damn near mandatory for understanding Western Civ, Western literature, Western history. That’s a different thing than teaching the concepts and interpretations of the Bible as a religion to gain converts.
If one were studying fora PhD in the literary impact of 14th century Latin American Lesbian Pagans a working knowledge of their culture and religion would also be necessary to understand the context of what they wrote.
The KJV of the Bible has been a classic in literature. At the time of its compilation the scholars used past forms of wording to give it an older quality. How many kids learned to read from the family Bible in earlier times before such literary works about “two mommies”.?
As an Oklahoma teacher, I will say that the majority of Oklahomans only care about schools insofar as it affects HS sports. Coaches are hired and fired based on win/loss records and whether Board members kids got enough playing time. As a whole, the citizenry cares not whether the kids learn history.
That’s a real shame. Favoritism is a specious creed.
why the fight???
stop tax funding and this alll this goes away and students STILL GET AN EDUCATION
JUST NOT A PUBLICLY FUNDED ONE
if the majority OR A LOUD MINORITY of a town in OK becomes Islamic
should/would the same suggestion be given!!!??? to use the quran
You miss the point. Christianity was central, and pivotal, throughout all of the history of western civilization. The Quran had zero historical significance in the events that led to the creation of America (going back 500 years!).
Oh, you mean like archeologist, historians and scholars have been using the bible as a source for several hundred years?
What a novel idea!
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