School districts serving more than two million elementary school children may adopt a curriculum based on the Bible.
Texas education authorities supported a new elementary school curriculum on Tuesday (19) that incorporates Bible-based teaching materials in reading and language arts classes, a controversial measure regarding the inclusion of religion in public education.
The optional curriculum has already attracted protests in Texas, which is emerging as a leader in the growing but highly contested push to expand the role of religion in public schools. The new curriculum could become a model for other states.
The vote was preliminary. The state education board typically holds an initial vote on issues in smaller committees. But all 15 members were present on Tuesday, and the final vote is expected to occur later this week with the same outcome.
Advocates for religious freedom say the new curriculum is the latest major effort by conservatives to explicitly link the nation’s history and politics to Christian values. Texas was the first state to allow public schools to hire religious chaplains as school counselors, and the Republican-controlled legislature is expected to once again attempt to require public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments, a measure that the elected president said he supported during his campaign.
Schools have emerged as a focal point of conflicts over the role of Christian values in public life. In Oklahoma, the state superintendent began purchasing Bibles for classroom use and sent a video to schools last week inviting students to pray for Trump. Louisiana is fighting in court over a new state mandate that all classrooms have the Ten Commandments on their walls.
Supporters of the Texas curriculum say the Bible is a fundamental part of American history and crucial for students’ understanding of the world. They argue that children’s literacy skills would suffer without a robust understanding of biblical references because Christian themes are pervasive in American culture.
State Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, said in a statement that the classes “would allow our students to better understand the connection between history, art, community, literature, and religion in crucial events such as the signing of the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Movement, and the American Revolution.”
The Texas State Board of Education, led by Republicans, sets standards for what should be taught to students and approves a selection of curricula, with individual schools and districts choosing which ones to teach.
The curriculum, designed for kindergarten through fifth grade, will be optional. However, school districts in the state, which serve about 2.3 million students in public schools from kindergarten to fifth grade, would receive financial incentives to adopt it. It would be available for districts to start using in August 2025.
At the Texas State Board of Education meeting on Monday, many parents, including several who identified as Christians, argued that it was their right, not the state’s, to choose how their children would learn about religion.
Others argued that Christianity was inseparable from American history and fundamental to understanding figures like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They emphasized that the Bible is often referred to as the most read book in the world.
Some also questioned whether the curriculum would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits the government from making laws that establish a religion.
Source: The New York Times