Ryan Walters, the far-right Superintendent of Schools in Oklahoma, was inspired by the passage of a law in Louisiana requiring every public school classroom to post The Ten Commandments. He decided that he could go even further. He just ordered every public school to teach the Bible. Given the religious diversity of students in Oklahoma, will he mandate the sacred texts of every religion? Will he mandate the Old Testament or the New Testament? Which version? Personally, I think the sacred books should be taught in their original language. Or not at all.
The wisdom of our nation’s Founders, who did not want religion and government to be entangled, becomes clearer every day. Is Supt. Walters imposing his own faith on others? Of course.
Oklahoma’s state superintendent on Thursday directed all public schools to teach the Bible, including the Ten Commandments, in the latest conservative push testing the boundaries between religious instruction and public education.
The superintendent, Ryan Walters, described the Bible as an “indispensable historical and cultural touchstone” and said it must be taught in certain grade levels.
“The Bible is a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of Western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system,” Mr. Walters, a Republican, said in his announcement, adding that “every teacher, every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom.”
The directive is likely to be challenged in court and could provoke the latest tangle over the role of religion in public schools, an issue that has increasingly taken on national prominence.
“The basis of our legal system”? “An eye for an eye”? Or “feed the hungry”? Is this a warning in the New Testament to billionaires: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled… But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.” Or, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The United States continues to move closer to two countries.
RED states will be ruthlessly ruled by the leaders of the Christian Nationalists and their extremist, unrealistic, translated misinterpretation of the Bible.
BLUE states will continue to be guided by the U.S. Constitution
If the RED states are not stopped, eventually the two will separate.
Will that separation be peaceful or bloody? I think it will be bloody because the RED states leaders will not have it any other way. And they will call it a crusade to justify the war. Putin will send Russian troops to fight alongside theirs. Maybe North Korea and Iran will too.
Once separated, the only way the BLUE states will be joined since they are divided by the Bible Belt, is through an alliance with Canada. For the East to reach the West and the other way around, flights, rail and road may have to be through Canada.
Expect walls to be built along all borders between RED and BLUE states.
Mr. Lofthouse,
Get professional help with your mental health issues. You are a total nutcase.
i am BEYOND SICK of people using mental illness as a weapon like you have just done.
Mr. Lofthouse is NOT a nutcase. The real nuts are now conservative Republicans who want everyone to become a Christian.
Well at least they can stop funding vouchers for religious charter schools. Ai yi yi, what is happening???
I am preparing a lesson on the rich man and Lazarus that I intend to sell to all the schools that want it. I might get rich—wait that would mean I might be victim within the context of the story itself— this is too terrible to imagine.
Has he read it? Oy, I required my AP English students to read Genesis and they were outraged.
“The Bible is a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country…..” And this guy taught AP U. S. History?? I did not know the bar was that low anywhere. Pathetic and shameful. A good reason to not live, work, or rear your kids in Oklahoma.
My heart aches for these teachers in Oklahoma forced into this situation. Lose their careers or teach religion in public schools. Those teachers are caught between a rock and a hard place.
Threatened: I hope it’s a good lawsuit in the making . . . as if teachers didn’t have enough to do. CBK
The problem is not teaching the Bible, it is–in this case–teaching ONLY the Bible and using it to indoctrinate students. The literature, art, and music–secular AND religious–of as many cultures as possible should be included in the curriculum, in an age-appropriate way.
Not to do so is to strip the curriculum of variety, diversity, understanding, and history; it also deprives students of examples of how different people in different times and places have wrestled with the big questions. Attend an upper elementary school “holiday” concert and you’ll likely hear the standard dull program of “Frosty the Snowman,” “Jingle Bells,” “White Christmas” and the like, with maybe a Hanukkah song thrown in for variety.
When I started teaching 25 years ago, I visited several concerts at surrounding schools, all of which put on basically the same program. I asked a couple of the teachers about variety and got the same reply: “Oh no, nothing religious. You’ll just get complaints….parents will call your principal and school board….etc etc.” (I never once had that happen.)
Yet our school music books from a major textbook publisher included sacred carols, Hanukah and Kwanzaa songs, and other seasonal holiday songs from Japan, China, Africa, and various Native tribes.
The next two paragraphs are from a conservative group that defends religion in our schools. I’m an agnostic myself, but include these paragraphs because they sum up the interpretation of the courts. (By the way, consider how narrow and limited a Christian school music curriculum would likely be.)—-
“As one federal court has held, the Establishment Clause does not prevent the singing of Christmas carols with religious origins by public school choirs. The study and performance of religious songs, including Christmas carols, are constitutional if their purpose is the “advancement of the students’ knowledge of society’s cultural and religious heritage, as well as the provision of an opportunity for students to perform a full range of music, poetry and drama that is likely to be of interest to the students and their audience.”
Likewise, public schools may teach about the biblical origins of Christmas and Easter. The United States Supreme Court has stated that “the Bible may constitutionally be used in an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like.” Therefore, a public school teacher may have students study Biblical passages that relate to Christmas (e.g., Matthew 1:18-2:22, Luke 2:1-20) if the purpose is to study the historical or literary significance of the passages. As the United States Department of Education has explained, “[p]ublic schools may not provide religious instruction, but they may teach about religion. For example, philosophical questions concerning religion, the history of religion, comparative religion, the Bible (or other religious teachings) as literature, and the role of religion in the history of the United States and other countries all are permissible public school subjects.”
bartbrush: copy that, exactly put. CBK
I can see a legitimate way the Ten Commandments can be a part of the curriculum. It would be in a class that gives an account for all sorts of religious texts and ideologies, but only as a section on the history of religions (and their relationship with familial, political, and moral order).
The point is not to preset one religious ideology or doctrine, or specific practices, etc., as the only right one or (God forbid) as state sponsored, or (God forbid again) as mindlessly and righteously opposed to other forms of religion and their cultural settings. (Pun intended on God forbid).
Also, most religions that have been around for awhile at least, have many similar kinds of doctrines . . . like the Ten Commandments.
It would take a sensitive and specialist teacher and could be (and probably is in some places) taught as a subset to history and as already a part of the curriculum. One could even ask children or even coached parents to speak about their own religion or even atheism (parents could be coached about the purpose of the class–to inform and not to indoctrinate).
My view is to keep those types of discussions out of K-12 public schools is a prescription for a right-headed reactionary response on the part of even moderate religious people who understand the need for secularity, and the import of religion in all of human history.
On the other side of the argument, to follow the Oklahoma principle, if I understand it correctly, is folly . . . only adds more fuel to the fire that is killing the whole idea of democracy. CBK
There are soooo many reasons this is wrong but you know teachers all over Oklahoma are sitting at home ‘enjoying’ their summers saying ” WHAT I have to TEACH WHAT???!!! What the heck kind of professional development am I going to have to sit through now? How am I fitting this into my already full day, what with all the testing prep I have to do every day? AHHH I just can’t take it anymore!”
Well at least I know that is what I would be saying.
Cee Mor: Do you mean teachers are real people? But really . . .
I think teachers are like sleeping giants . . . push too far and we will either lose them (to the MAGA crowd) or suffer what may occur when they finally do wake up from being poked with too many sharp sticks. CBK
Who’s bible????? Duh…
How about The Bible as Literature? And make it an elective. It helps everyone to know allusions in American Literature, in particular. (The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, The Pearl (I know–Steinbeck was an old white guy). It’s awfully hard to teach some of these works when students don’t even know what the Garden of Eden is. Kids study mythology and know all the heroic characters in the films and references to those characters. We can teach ABOUT religion. We just can’t proselytize.
Give it time. I don’t know how many of Oklahoma’s bright young minds will turn to blobs of gray matter in the meantime at the hands of the mental giant who runs their state education department, but by mandating a specific book and calling it a “historical document,” he has perhaps inadvertently invited scrutiny of this document as a historical text by historians and curriculum specialists. The Digital Inquiry Group, formerly the Stanford History Education Group, may provide lessons on how to source historical documents properly. The Bible fails almost all of their tests, partly because it has just a lot of translated and recopied text, some utterly anachronistic, most completely uncorroborated, featuring miraculous and legendary events. Still, under this “historian-like” scrutiny, it will fail. Now, I feel very much pain for the Oklahoma children whose brains have been thrown under the critical thinking bus by Mr Walters, and they may not recover. But kids are resilient, and history will write this education story more objectively down the road, perhaps noting how it settled once and for all that the Bible and similar religious texts from other faith traditions are stories for teaching a particular set of morals, not history books or science books. Sometimes, it takes someone from inside to bring that story to the people. I hope it happens soon.
How interesting to see that conservative GOP governors in Oklahoma want the history of the Bible to be taught but NOT the history of slavery. [Slavery apparently isn’t a history of this country.]
Quote: “The Bible is a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of Western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system,” Mr. Walters, a Republican, said in his announcement, adding that “every teacher, every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom.”
These Are the States That Passed Laws Restricting the Teaching of Racial History
The latest culture war in education is being fought over how schools teach racial issues and episodes in U.S. history. That has led to a slew of state legislative measures that limit or ban discussions touching on the sensitive topic of race. Some extend the prohibition to teaching about sexism.
FutureEd has identified 47 bills introduced or prefiled this year in 23 state legislatures that limit teaching on these topics. Alabama, Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah have enacted 11 of these bills, signed into law by their Republican governors…
https://www.the74million.org/article/these-are-the-states-that-passed-laws-restricting-the-teaching-of-racial-history/
Thank you, Carol, for pointing out the blatant contradiction here.
Will you sign the petition calling on state leaders to reject Oklahoma’s unconstitutional public school Bible mandate?
Dear MoveOn member,
On Thursday, Oklahoma’s far-right and extreme State Superintendent Ryan Walters shockingly announced that he would require the Bible to be taught in fifth through 12th grades, a clear violation of students’ freedom of religion. He even suggested providing a uniform curriculum to direct how educators incorporate the Bible into their classrooms.1 This is right out of the Christian nationalist playbook and, if enforced in Oklahoma, could signal other far-right extremists to pass similar requirements in states across the country.
There’s nothing wrong with teaching a religious text as part of history and culture. But forcing students of diverse faiths and religions to learn one specific religious text and not any others is wrong. Oklahoma’s recent Bible mandate is part of a growing Christian nationalist movement to break down the walls separating church and state. And public schools—not just in Oklahoma but across the country—are ground zero. We can’t let that happen…
https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/reject-oklahoma-s-unconstitutional-school-bible-mandate?source=rawlink&utm_source=rawlink&share=c8ed1163-a596-4251-b83d-26e73e55aace