texas schools required to teach the bible

[ravenguy2000]

Texas public schools required to teach Bible this year - KLTV 7 News Tyler, Longview, Jacksonville |

WHITEHOUSE, TX (KLTV) - The school year is almost here, and if literature of the Bible is not already offered in your child's school, it will be this fall.

Books are a common sight in classrooms around the nation, but the Bible is one book that is not. Come this fall, a Texas law says all public schools must offer information relating to the Bible in their curriculum.

"By the end of the year, what they begin to realize is that it is pervasive. You can't get away from it. The kids came back and were like 'It's everywhere,'" said John Keeling, the social studies chair at Whitehouse High School. Whitehouse already offers a Bible elective. "The purpose of a course like this isn't even really to get kids to believe it per say. It is just to appreciate the profound impact that it has had on our history and on our government," said Keeling.

The law actually passed in 2007, but this will be the first school year it is enforced because the bill says, "The provisions of this act pertaining to a school district do not take effect until the 2009-2010 school year."

This has gained mixed reactions from East Texans. "I think it is a good thing because a lot of kids don't have that experience, and they already want to take prayer out of school as it is-- and you see where our kids are ending up!" said Tyler resident Laura Tucker.

Tyler resident Havis Tatum disagress with Tucker. He said, "I don't want anybody teaching their religious beliefs to my child unless they want to send their child to my house and let me teach them my religious views. There is no difference."

School officials tell us schools haven't enforced this law because of confusion over the bill's wording and lack of state funding.

For now, each school district must find a way to fill the requirement before the seats are filled with students.

We would like to know what you think about this story. Click here to leave your comments and read the contents of Texas House Bill 1287.

[ravenguy2000]

I'm mostly just posting this for "per say" and "disagress"

[sppunk]

I lived in Tyler for nearly two years. They'll be all for this.

[Future Boy]

these people need to be shot

[ohnoitsbonnie]

It may only be an elective course and I'm fine with that but the actual class itself will probably just all be preaching. Hey but it seems like Texans are okay with that so more power to 'em

[ohnoitsbonnie]

(d) A course offered under this section shall follow
applicable law and all federal and state guidelines in maintaining
religious neutrality and accommodating the diverse religious
views, traditions, and perspectives of students in their school
district. A course under this section shall not endorse, favor, or
promote, or disfavor or show hostility toward, any particular
religion or nonreligious faith or religious perspective. Nothing in
this statute is intended to violate any provision of the United
States Constitution or federal law, the Texas Constitution or any
state law, or any rules or guidelines provided by the United States
Department of Education or the Texas Education Agency.

W/e weirdos

[Toast]

Biblical scholarship would be fun to teach. Like that half of Paul's letters aren't his work. That we don't know who actually wrote the Gospels, the names are later attributions. The Gospel of Luke was written on commission. And so on.

[duovamp]

Well learning about the Bible as literature is one thing. Learning it as truth is another. I don't have any problem with a "The Bible as literature" English course.

[redbull]

i'm sure that will be included

[redbull]

you can throw the bible as literature thing around all you want but i doubt that all these courses will be taught by impartial teachers

[ATS]

[ohnoitsbonnie]

I am moving to Texas :/

[redbreegull]

It makes me sick to my stomach when I hear people say that this country was founded on Christian values, or that the Bible influenced our government and laws.

Mainly because these things are completely untrue.

[reprise85]

Originally Posted by Future Boy

these people need to be shot

Agreed. This is beyond fucked.

[Nimrod's Son]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

It makes me sick to my stomach when I hear people say that this country was founded on Christian values, or that the Bible influenced our government and laws.

Mainly because these things are completely untrue.

Revisionist history.

[publius clodius]

it's not like any of your founding fathers were atheists tho

jus sayin

[ohnoitsbonnie]

Heads up you guys ever is about to make a long patronizing post

[Starla]

I'm happy to see this. We need God back in the schools. There would be less criminals and more God-fearing Christians rising up in this great nation to lead this country in the right direction.

[publius clodius]

what bugs me is that even the people i know who did attend "religion" as a subject in school don't know shit about theology / church history / philosophy / the bible "as literature"

so yes it doesnt work and its stupid

[ryan patrick]

the class seems kind of goofy given that you could have study of the bible and related works as a large part of a world religions class, or as a jumping off point for a western civilization class.

as it is it sounds like glorified sunday school to me.

[Ever]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

It makes me sick to my stomach when I hear people say that this country was founded on Christian values, or that the Bible influenced our government and laws.

Mainly because these things are completely untrue.

From what I know outta all the founding fathers only two were actually christian; Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry. They were Calvinists. The rest like Washington were sorta deists. That's not to say that religious factors and such didn't play a part in the forming of ideals that drove early American history.

If you fast forward from the founding fathers to sometime In the early 19th century you'd see that Christianity as Christianity proper was going out of practice and Unitarianism was the closest thing left.

Precisely at this time began a christian revival movement of Pietism which was new form of Christianity where people were said to become Christians through a strong emotional experience where they'd have to roll on the floor, roll their eyes and speak in tongues etc. This kinda "second baptism" was required before you could say you were one of faith. Now, they didn't care about which church you belonged to cause it was all about your personal relationship to god etc. so it was very accessible to a lot of people. It was especially popular in rural new England and slightly westward (an interesting note is that the idea of public schooling itself came this part of the U.S). The most important thing to realize about Pietism is that one of its key messages is that you don't get salvation unless you ensure the salvation of others. So the job most Pietists took upon themselves was to stop the sins of everyone else.

Now the Pietists were very big Sabbaticals and they were very much so against liquor. Anything that clouded your mind or your theological free-will was evil. In the South this institution was followed very loosely compared to the North where a certain zeal and evangelism fueled a call to purge the world from sin. Another thing the Pietists didn't like was the Catholic church. The way they saw it the rigidity of observance prevented any real relationship with god forming. the Lutheran church was similarly frowned upon. A famous Pietist rallying call from somewhere around this time period was to Christianize the Catholics.

An interesting anecdote is that Lutherans and German Catholics had a tradition where after church on Sunday they'd go to a beer garden. This was sorta the evilist of evils for the Pietists.

Now cause it was their mission to get everyone else saved and cause this involved them not sinning, drinking or being in the catholic church etc. the Pietists had to look for the only place that made force legal which is of course the Government.

The way they aimed to achieve this was of course public schooling. They couldn't stamp it out constitutionally so then they figured well adult Catholics were already doomed but if kids go to public schools they can be Pietized. Horace Mann and all the other Education reformers were of course big Pietists and the motivation behind the whole public schools as we know them today movement extends from exactly that. The desire to stop the Catholics and the Lutherans and teach Protestantism by outlawing Parochial schools.

Now what formed was a Lutergical coalition which was basically Lutherans Catholics and Calvanists that went in direct opposition to the Pietists. These were the guys who believed the idealogical opposite of the Pietists which was that Church was indeed important and religious observance in a ritualized organized manner was the key to salvation.

Now in Congress this set up two camps between the 1830s to the end of the 19th century. Basically on the one side you had the Democrats who were all the Lutergicals and on the other you had the Whig Party and the Republicans who were all the Pietists.

Politics were pretty different at this point in time compared to today. For one there was hardly any bipartisanship and voters were pretty cutthroat about what they believed in.

Basically the Pietists and the Republicans and the Whigs and all those guys were also economically mercantalist. They believed in certain forms of protectionism and tariffs and they were against cheap farms and cheap farm products. The democrats on the other hand were Lassiez-Faire liberals. They said look the same guys whoa re trying to take away your schooling are also trying to take away your farms and your gold etc. Now this is interesting cause due to the original religious motivations behind these ideas you had a lot of very common very simple laymen writing about and printing pamphlets on very complex economic issues.

In 1896, at the democratic convention, however, it was announced that the Democratic party became pietist! Partially due to the south finally becoming more evangelical for various reasons and partially due to the creation of predominantly Pietist mountain states by the republicans. William Jennings Bryan created a coalition between these Southern Pietists and the mountain Pietists and kicked out the lutergicals. As such Democrats adopted the Republican policies of prohibition etc.

From this point on there was no real opposition to the republicans except within the republican party itself. In 1912 or so a new even more extremely Pietist "progressive party" was formed. This consisted of Pietist ministers, social workers, progressive economists, old time progressives like Theodore Roosevelt (who began his career bringing down saloons as a police commissioner) , Morgan Partners, John Dewey etc. They were strongly Prohibitionist and I think in a convention or something Theodore Roosevelt made a speech called "a confession of faith" and sang hymns where he replaced the name Jesus with his own and at the end said something like "We stand before Armageddon! And we battle for the Lord!!"

To put in a single sentence how much religion influences politics the founder of the American Economic Association Richard T. Ely said "government is god's major instrument of redemption" and this is an Association which produced generation after generation of political advisers.

Eventually all the religous stuff kinda died out but the fact remains that Government, the motives of Government as we know it are historically speaking deeply and I mean deeply rooted in religion.

So to put it simply

Redbreegull, you are incredibly incorrect

[Ever]

You guys, its not like any of this bible stuff is new in schools or anything. The reason there is public schooling as it is today in the first place is precisely because of sparring religious motivations.

There's no reason to be all shocked that the Government is mandating religion inside the schools.

The government always stood for exactly that. Telling people what they can and cannot believe. Thankfully the constitution usually stands in the way. If anyone really feels any need to keep religious beliefs and school separate they would say that the government should just not meddle at all and let people make their own religious choices when it comes to education.

This means allowing both religious and not religious schools, not telling schools what they can and cannot teach and just getting out of the business of schooling all together!

[ravenguy2000]

Originally Posted by Ever

There's no reason to be all shocked that the Government is allowing religion inside the schools.

I don't think anyone is shocked, although it isn't really allowing in this case, it's mandating.

My first grade teacher read us bible stories every morning and I had a music teacher who would read passages to explain the meanings of Christmas songs we'd sing without understanding. I had biology teachers explain that they absolutely were Creationists in the strictest sense of the word and if we didn't like it we could study what we wanted on our own time. So even if it's not sanctioned or required by higher authorities no one should be shocked it's pervasive at the classroom level.

[Ever]

Actually I think if you substitute allowing for mandating in my original sentence you get a better idea of what I was trying to say anyway.

I will edit that now.

I actually approve of the "spontaneous order" teaching of religion as described in your anecdote. Ideally I would prefer it to not have to be veiled or controlled by anyone.

When its veiled like that a) its hampered and b) parents don't know exactly whats going on, at least beforehand

With complete freedom in education I think you'd see new school types forming and schools being far more ostentatious about what sort of moral values education they offer, which would lead to far more informed parental choice and more choice in general.

Basically I was saying I would like to see Education outside of state hands completely, or at least handled collectively only at an extremely local level and only by some communities. This means get rid of the idea of public schooling, get rid of the whole one size can fit all idea.

Without doing this you're always gonna have one group pissed off or feeling screwed over at the hands of another larger group. In this case non-christians in the hands of christians.

[sppunk]

Guys, most schools in Texas pledge allegiance to the Texas flag before the U.S. flag each morning. This isn't out there, really.

[Trotskilicious]

that's not actually true

[Trotskilicious]

and i haven't heard anything about this happening in austin so i take umbrage at the statment that this is going on in "Texas public schools" instead of a few school districts

[jczeroman]

This is what happens when you make things like schools into a monopolistic political resource. There is one way to solve this - let communities set up their own schools, with their own standards. Those that teach stupid crap will fail, those that teach useful things will succeed. The problem will be gone in one generation.

Nobody fights if Christians, Muslims, Atheists, musicians, steel-workers and academics are completely free to set up their own schools and standards based on what their communities desire. The debate and constant posturing over "our children" is OVER because there is no longer a single resources that controls "our children."

[sppunk]

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

that's not actually true

When did it change? I was part of a Dallas Morning News feature in 2003 that was based on that, saying something like 80 percent of elementary schools recited both.

[Trotskilicious]

yes recited both

again you said something completely different and factually incorrect.