Church, Meet State

Via Memorandum, Texas's 2007 requirement that the Bible be taught in all public schools takes effect this school year.

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 se, it is just to appreciate the profound impact that it has had on our history and on our government."

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."

Two observations:

1) This can't be Constitutional, can it? Freedom of worship and all that? I can understand offering it as an elective, but a requirement?

2) What if the book was the Qu'ran?

Some quick research on the topic uncovers this:

Legislators had built safeguards into the law that were meant to ensure the class on the Bible's impact on history and literature of Western civilization would be taught in an "objective, academic manner that neither promotes nor disparages religion," and not "from a particular sectarian point of view," according to the law.

Those protections included mandated teacher training, state-approved training materials and curriculum standards deemed constitutional by the state attorney general.

The Texas Education Agency told school districts that it would not provide the training and materials because the Legislature did not budget the $750,000 to do so.

And the curriculum standards approved by the State Board of Education, though constitutional, were vague and provided districts little direction for crafting a course on such a legally and culturally touchy topic.

As a result, the Wichita Falls district administration canceled plans for the Bible class.

"We didn't want our teachers teaching something that we didn't have the legal parameters of," district spokeswoman Renae Murphy said. "There was a lot there that was left up in the air with no details, and we needed a lot more details."

All Texas public school districts for the first time this fall must offer instruction in the literature and history of the Bible under the 2007 law.

Many school districts, including Austin and most other Central Texas districts, say their current high school curriculum already satisfies the requirement because it addresses world religions in history and geography courses.

Many other school districts — there is no definitive count of how many — say they plan to launch a new elective on the Bible if there is enough student demand. The teachers say they are working hard to ensure the course is done right and within the legal constraints, even without the state's help.

Education agency officials point the finger at the Legislature for not providing the specific authority to spend money for the Bible course support.

So, the law was authored and passed, and yet...the money to safely teach the course wasn't provided, the instruction to teach the Bible from an objective point of view wasn't provided, and the objective curriculum itself wasn't provided. None of the safeguards were provided at all.

Yeah, that's not a colossal screw-up or anything. They're dumping all this on the individual districts and teachers and saying "Teach it."

However, the legislation's author, state Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, said it was the education agency that dropped the ball.

"That's news to me that they didn't get any money appropriated for it," said Chisum, who was also chairman of the House Appropriations Committee at the time and said he would have earmarked money for his own bill.

There was not a specific budget rider directing the agency to spend the money for the Bible course, nor was the agency precluded from using $750,000, a relatively small amount in its budget, for that purpose.

The agency also did not include a request for the upcoming 2010-11 budget to pay for the Bible course support going forward.

Chisum said that the education agency should have spent that money to help the districts prepare and that the districts "would have been better off if TEA had done what we expected them to do, which is to have the money there to teach the course."

John Keeling, social studies department chairman at Whitehouse High School in East Texas, said he can understand why districts might be reluctant to offer a course.

"If you end up with a teacher that is not prepared, if you end up with a curriculum that is not balanced and academically sound, I could definitely see how a district could get into trouble pretty quick," said Keeling, who taught a Bible literacy course last year.

You think?

Yeah, somehow I see this turning into a disaster, imminently.