Essay:Importance of Teaching the Bible in Public Schools
From Conservapedia
This essay is an original work by Benp. Please comment only on the talk page.
The life of an English teacher is full of ups and downs. Sometimes, a student will produce an absolutely brilliant turn of phrase, or a particularly well-constructed argument; those moments are a joy for any sincere teacher.
In other cases, though, the moment...while equally memorable...is not so delightful. During my first year of teaching, I built a unit of instruction around great American poets, including Robert Frost. In his poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay," there is an allusion to the Garden of Eden. Understanding this allusion is fairly critical to understanding the poem, but I wasn't very worried. After all, I thought, Eden is such a well-known concept that students are bound to get the allusion.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
Much to my dismay, not only did most of my students not get the allusion, a majority of them simply didn't know what the Garden of Eden was.
This was the beginning of a growing realization on my part--a realization that I was attempting to teach with a severe handicap. As an English teacher, it's my job to teach students about Western literature...and yet the single most referenced and influential work in Western literature, the Bible, is absent from my classroom.
How does that make sense? Setting aside the topic of religion for a moment, how can an English teacher properly do his job if he can't explain half of the metaphors, similes, and allusions in the books he's teaching?
How can Shakespeare be taught properly while ignoring the (on average) 40 Biblical references in each play? How can novels such as Billy Budd: Foretopman, The Old Man and the Sea, or even The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe be properly taught to students who aren't adequately equipped to recognize the use of Christ figures?
The question extends to other subject areas, as well. How can a student fully understand and appreciate, say, art history without a knowledge of the Bible passages that have inspired so much of Western art? How can they come to a full understanding of musical theory without at least a nodding acquaintance with the liturgical music that laid the cornerstones?
The truly frustrating thing is that there is no law against using the Bible in a public school classroom. While the courts have ruled that devotional instruction cannot occur, there is simply no reason the Bible cannot be recognized and acknowledged for its monumental contributions to Western culture and civilization. No reason, that is, save for a misunderstanding and misapplication of "separation of Church and state."
Who is to blame? I'm not sure it's easy to answer that question. On the one hand, it's easy to find fault with overly-cautious administrators who banish the Bible from the classroom out of fear of a lawsuit. On the other hand, it certainly can't be denied that, in our litigation-happy society, the threat of lawsuits against schools is a very real one.
The real losers are, of course, the students. Studies have shown that students with an understanding of the Bible have a significant advantage in various academic endeavors. Denying them that advantage is unforgivable.
