The Bible in the classroom

The New York Times has an article on the attempts of a Texas school district to provide a class on the Bible as an elective.1 There are some obvious flaws here on both sides. Providing needless ammunition to those who would have the United States follow Europe's disastrous course to complete secularization2 is something that, had I been the one designing this curriculum, I would have gone out of my way to avoid. The authors apparently had other ideas, feeling it necessary, according to the New York Times report, to include sections on disproving evolution, and poorly researched claims that NASA has verified that the Earth has halted in its orbit. On the other hand, telling students that "Throughout most of the last 2,000 years, the majority of men living in the Western world have accepted the statements of the Scriptures as genuine."3 is a simple statement of fact, no matter what the origin of that particular wording might be.

The authors are somewhat subtle in their bias, they call the idea that the Constitution was framed with Christian ideals and principles firmly in mind "dubious" (actually they state that it is a dubious claim to say it is based on "Scripture," but given Protestantism, I feel it amounts to the same thing). And no, this is not phrased as part of the critic's assertions; it simply isn't worded as a summary of their position, but rather as at statement of what points they target. I am not saying this clearly. ugh. Basically I think it interesting that anything in favor of this curriculum is explicitly a quote or paraphrase, while this is not.

Really though, if this course is as flawed as presented, we are in the long run better off without it. We do not need to be setting ourselves up for a loss if we truly want to keep in the public consciousness the deeply held religious beliefs of our founding fathers. We do not need to be applauding evangelical content in public schools if the cost is putting science and religion a false opposition that will prevent these children from believing Catholicism.