The Bible in Public Schools

[Jayhawker Soule]

i think all other religious texts should be introduced, not just the bible as that would suggest the bible is the only religion to consider.

Absolutely - especially if one of the goals is to promote pluralism and understanding.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I think teaching kid Biblical criticism would be useful. It could give them all sorts of tools.

Biblical criticism, at least as the term is typically used, requires a knowledge of greek and/or hebrew. It's not really something you can teach before college.

 

[ChristineES]

I thought they weren't allowed to do that in public schools.
If they do teach the Bible as literature, maybe they should do some other writings of other religions as well- to at least make it fair.
I read Plato's Republic- good reading.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I thought they weren't allowed to do that in public schools.
If they do teach the Bible as literature, maybe they should do some other writings of other religions as well- to at least make it fair.
I read Plato's Republic- good reading.

They do sometimes, but never in any depth (the one occasional exception being the Homeric epics, which were almost "biblical" for the Greeks). But the issue isn't "fairness." In fact, many European countries teach a literary and intellectual tradition specific to that country (e.g., Dante in Italy or the works of the german philosophers/writers such from Kant onwards in Germany). Americans don't have any intellectual equivalent and have only a pitiful version of such literary traditions.

Regardless, in the quote provided by the OP, it isn't just the literary nature of the bible which will be taught, but the influence of the text on Western thought and history. This influence is so significant and ubiquitous that it is impossible to gain any in-depth understanding of Western intellectual, artistic, even political history without knowing about it. If the point were to expose students to religious texts in general (for literary purposes, for multi-culturalism, etc.) then by all means other religious texts should be included. However, it seems as if that is neither the point of the educational agenda nor is it as important as exposure to the roots and evolution of Western thought.

However, as I said early, I do question the efficacy of such an endeavor, if not its goals.

 

[Me Myself]

The [Christian] devil is in the details. I am a strong supporter of enhancing religious literacy, but I seriously doubt that we as a society have the interest or maturity to present it properly in the public schools.

This.

I work for a public school and I'd be upset if they tried this in my district. Most kids barely know the classics. We don't need these kinds of tactics. Are Christians that desperate?

There are far more useful and important subjects to spend valuable class time on.

And those as well.

There are many things that can be taught. I mean, people´s influences by religion are better left summarized tha anything else. Most of the populace couldn´t even read the bible anyways. The bible is too big of a book(s) to be seriously studied with any significant depth without an amount of time that would completely defeat the purpose of teaching it simply as "one of the influences" of the thoughts of the time.

It would make no sense and serve no purpose.

Except putting the bible in the school just because.

 

[Father Heathen]

If the idea is to teach, not preach, then they should include other holy texts, talmud, koran, gita, sutras, book of mormon, etc. And should be voluntary rather than compulsory.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

If the idea is to teach, not preach, then they should include other holy texts, talmud, koran, gita, sutras, book of mormon, etc. And should be voluntary rather than compulsory.

If the idea is to teach how certain texts have influenced Western (and therefore American) history, traditions, culture, thought, etc., then why the need to include other religions? Other texts/authors certainly (Shakespeare, Plato, Aristotle, etc.), but why other religious texts that have had minimal influence?

 

[Koldo]

The [Christian] devil is in the details. I am a strong supporter of enhancing religious literacy, but I seriously doubt that we as a society have the interest or maturity to present it properly in the public schools.

I agree completely and I couldn't have said it better. Frubals.

 

[England my lionheart]

Quote Reptillian:

The thing is that they won't be taught about all religions. If a similar resolution were passed regarding the Quran or the Bhagavad Gita, people in my state would be up in arms about it.

Thats scary,even Church of England Schools teach religious education that includes other religions.

I agree that it wouldn't hurt to have people know the Bible better. As an example, a few weeks ago I was out drinking with a group of friends celebrating my best friend's graduation from college. At one point I was asked where my friend had gone off to and I replied, "How should I know? Am I my brother's keeper?" I was met with confused stares and one girl asked me, "He's your brother?" I was like, "No, it's a biblical quote." So I can see that people aren't as familiar with the Bible as they could be. The question is, should they be?

Personally i don't think its neccessary,but i think access should be available to those who are interested.

 

[MartyrX]

If that's the case, then they need to provide instructions on other religious books. They won't, so I find this offensive and troublesome.

 

[Alceste]

If the idea is to teach how certain texts have influenced Western (and therefore American) history, traditions, culture, thought, etc., then why the need to include other religions? Other texts/authors certainly (Shakespeare, Plato, Aristotle, etc.), but why other religious texts that have had minimal influence?

ALL these texts have been influential. Not only on society, but on each other. Nobody gets around more than philosophers and gurus.

The unfortunate fact that our narcissistic Christian / Caucasian ancestors ignored the contribution of other cultures and religions when they cobbled together our histories and curricula is no reason for us to discount those contributions. America's railways were built by Buddhists. Their religious mythology was poached from the Jews. Their best musical genres were invented by freed African slaves. Their math comes from the Arabs. Their philosophy and reason come from the Greeks. The survival of the first generation of North American pioneers is due to the generosity of the natives. Is there any good reason you shouldn't learn anything at all about these cultures?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

If the idea is to teach how certain texts have influenced Western (and therefore American) history, traditions, culture, thought, etc., then ...

... then it would be fully in line with American parochialism. If, on the other hand, the intent were to engender understanding of other cultures, then it might serve to broaden perspectives and mitigate xenophobia.

 

[Dirty Penguin]

I think teaching kid Biblical criticism would be useful. It could give them all sorts of tools.

Save for the home, Sunday school or college.

 

[Dirty Penguin]

If the idea is to teach, not preach, then they should include other holy texts, talmud, koran, gita, sutras, book of mormon, etc. And should be voluntary rather than compulsory.

Don't forget Dianetics...Satanic Bible....

I'm sure we can add others......

I just feel as though these books are too vast to teach at a secondary level. Most of the kids barely know Shakespeare or any of the Greek/Roman classics....

Shucks...many don't even know their own history....

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

ALL these texts have been influential.

The question is to whom. It's certainly important to know about other cultures and how schools of thought, texts, etc., have influenced these. However, in America especially, too many people simply have no idea what literary, philosophical, political, theological, etc., traditions have influenced their worldview. This is less true of countries which have a clear literary/intellectual tradition specific to that country (Germany, Italy, France, etc.) but that doesn't mean it isn't an issue there to some extent. Having a shared cultural knowledge bank upon which to draw while having no idea where it came from or what it means is very problematic. To take a simple example: most of the people I talk to, regardless of education level, know the name Oedipus or at least Oedipal. Fewer know that the latter comes from Freud, and fewer still that his use comes from Greek tragedy. Sometimes the lack of this knowledge is just unfortunate, as it means that people miss out on cultural references they wouldn't otherwise (such as the title of "the sun also rises", the words on the gravestone of Harry' Potter's parents, the last stanza of Housman's "Grenadier", the opening lines of the movie Chariot's of Fire, etc.), but other times it is a real issue with wide-ranging consequences.

Their religious mythology was poached from the Jews.

It's much more complicated than that.

Their math comes from the Arabs.

No, it doesn't. A good deal of the origins of modern mathematics can be traced to the Greeks (other cultures independently developed certain mathematical formulae, notations, etc., and it is no doubt true that the influence of Arabic mathematics on European culture did not encapsulate the entirety of the mathematical expertise). A small amount (and the name algebra) can be traced to Arabic improvements on and developments of Greek mathematics. While the Greeks were focused on geometry (hence squares and cubes, rather than exponents in general, as the former were used to calculate area and volume respectively), the Arabs began to look at geometric formulae and concepts abstracted from shapes themselves, beginning algebra. They also took and expanded upon Indian combinatorics and incorporated these into their "abstact" systems (what al-Khwarizmi called al-jabr), and perhaps most importantly they continued and fully developed the decimal system. These are all important (although the extent to which later European mathematics depended directly on these, rather than independently discovering/developing them, is debated) but they are dwarfed by the contributions of Greek mathematics which were enormously influential in Arabic mathematics and also directly and enormously influential on European mathematics. In any event, very little of what people (from elementary school children to doctorates in mathematics) learn about math can be traced directly to arabic influences. What didn't originate with the greeks is almost always traceable to philosophers/mathematicians from the Scholastics onwards.

Their philosophy and reason come from the Greeks.

Began with. Christianity tied Greek philosophy into religion in a way that had not been done before in the West, thus cementing a relationship (at least among the educated) "higher-learning" and religious study. Without it, we wouldn't have universities. For Plato and similar philosophers, philosophy was a way to understand the cosmos, but it existed almost entirely seperate from religion (which was a practice, more than a system of beliefs), which explains Plato's limited, unfinished, and rather awkward attempts to combine philosophy and cosmology. After the more or less intellectual bankruptcy which followed the fall of the roman Empire, it take did a few centuries for monks and priests to go from much more than simply preserving knowledge (after losing much) to developing and improving upon what was known, but by the end of the scholastic era, significant developments in logic, historiography, philosophy, etc., had been made. Most importantly, the physical foundations for the modern era of intellectual achievement had been laid: the university system. Whatever the church did to stifle intellectual growth when Constantine began (and others continued) to burn texts, destroy temples, stifle unorthodox views when Christianity first began to be dominant, and whatever it did later to thinkers like Galileo, all of this is dwarfed by the church's installment of various institutions devoted not just to study (learning what was already known), but to growth. Levels of advancement came from contributing, not just from attaining a certain familiarity with what was already known. Even after the Reformation, and after universities increasingly seperated from the church (which, in many countries, ceased to exist as a coherent entity) the relation between christianity and the university remained, even in America. Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Boston College, Boston University, etc., were all originally Christian institutions designed primarily to train clergy and steeped in Christian tradition. In fact, so-called "Enlightenment" period and the Scientific Revolution began not just within Christian circles, but via the propagation of new cognitive values which embraced criticism and investigation compared with the almost purely exegetical approach of scholasticism. One of the first applications of the "new critical cognitive values" (a phrase borrowed from Tucker's Our Knowledge of the Past, Cambridge University Press, 2004) was biblical criticism. Classical philology, modern historiography, comparative linguistics, etc., grew out biblical studies and the methods, developments, and ideas therein.

Is there any good reason you shouldn't learn anything at all about these cultures?

None whatsoever. However, I teach high school and college kids. I know something about what they are taught and what they learn (two very different things). It would be great if we could teach them all the important texts, regardless of which cultures they were important to (or most important to). Alas, we can't. So the question is, given the amount of time there is to teach, and the capacity for the average student to learn the material at any given level, what should be taught? It is absolutely important for students to learn the culutural and intellectual traditions behind other worldviews. Too many students from Western cultures have little appreciation as to how different, for example, far more communal cultures can be. However, part of understanding other cultures, both past and present, is knowing your own. I don't mean knowing someone from Quebec knowing their French roots or someone from Ireland knowing their Gaelic roots or even someone from South Boston knowing their Irish roots. There is a cohesiveness (despite great differences) to European and American philosophical, theological, intellectual, etc., outlook because of a shared religious tradition (and a religious tradition in which orthodoxy, not orthopraxy, mattered). Not understanding this background is dangerous, in a similar way to the dangers implied in the saying "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it."

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

... then it would be fully in line with American parochialism. If, on the other hand, the intent were to engender understanding of other cultures, then it might serve to broaden perspectives and mitigate xenophobia.

See my last post. Without at least a fairly decent appreciation of the influences behind "Western" culture/thought, understanding other cultures is much more difficult and (barring direct exposure) perhaps impossible. There's no basis for comparison, because there's no conception of what that other cultures are really being compared to. I've rarely taught high school age children from other countries, but I have more experience with teaching college kids from other countries (and then there are the other graduate students and PhDs from other countries I interact with much more regularly). Most think of "their culture" in terms "Irish culture" or "Italian culture" or even "Southern culture" (Southern US). And these certainly exist. However, when these become the bases of cultural comparison than it becomes (I believe) less likely, not more, that we will "broaden perspectives and mitigate xenophobia", because now comparisons between, say, French and German culture are no different (in that they are comparisons between cultures) than comparisons between French and Indian culture. This kind of approach to culture establishes barriers, it doesn't break them down.

 

[Koldo]

The question is to whom. It's certainly important to know about other cultures and how schools of thought, texts, etc., have influenced these. However, in America especially, too many people simply have no idea what literary, philosophical, political, theological, etc., traditions have influenced their worldview. This is less true of countries which have a clear literary/intellectual tradition specific to that country (Germany, Italy, France, etc.) but that doesn't mean it isn't an issue there to some extent. Having a shared cultural knowledge bank upon which to draw while having no idea where it came from or what it means is very problematic. To take a simple example: most of the people I talk to, regardless of education level, know the name Oedipus or at least Oedipal. Fewer know that the latter comes from Freud, and fewer still that his use comes from Greek tragedy. Sometimes the lack of this knowledge is just unfortunate, as it means that people miss out on cultural references they wouldn't otherwise (such as the title of "the sun also rises", the words on the gravestone of Harry' Potter's parents, the last stanza of Housman's "Grenadier", the opening lines of the movie Chariot's of Fire, etc.), but other times it is a real issue with wide-ranging consequences.

What real issues with wide-ranging consequences? I think this is the crux of the point you are trying to make but without further elaboration it is too vague to either agree or disagree with what you are saying.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

See my last post. Without at least a fairly decent appreciation of the influences behind "Western" culture/thought, understanding other cultures is much more difficult and (barring direct exposure) perhaps impossible.

That is unmitigated nonsense. I do not need to inculcate kids with an understanding of Shakespeare and Twain in order to teach them why their classmate is not eating lunch in the cafeteria during Ramadan or what it means when some other kid celebrates Hanukkah instead of Christmas.

 

[Jacksnyte]

I think so. Educating the Bible in this manner, I think, is actually something I'd support enthusiastically.

It's not science, nor is it history. It's culturally relevent, and it allows critical thinking. Personally, I think it would encourage everyone to see the Bible as a book that has had profound influence and WHY it's had profound influence in a secular setting.

And I would like to see more study on Plato's Republic, Wollstonescraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Machiavelli's The Prince, and the I Ching....and how each book influenced and impacted culture(s).

I understand what you're saying, but including this in public schools will only encourage teachers who are fundy christians to feel as if presenting their religious view is sanctioned by the govt. Teachers who are very religious already have a hard time keeping themselves from attempting to indoctrinate kids. I doubt the subject would be presented in an un-biased manner.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

That is unmitigated nonsense. I do not need to inculcate kids with an understanding of Shakespeare and Twain in order to teach them why their classmate is not eating lunch in the cafeteria during Ramadan or what it means when some other kid celebrates Hanukkah instead of Christmas.

And I wasn't talking about Shakespeare or Twain. Nor Hanukkah vs. Christmas. I'm talking about much more fundamental cultural differences, such as individualistic vs. collectivist cultures.