<p>Well, I predict we’ll see at least one lawsuit over this, even if the Georgia legislature’s motives are Simon pure. The chances that the Bible can be taught as literature, and literature only, in the heart of the Bible Belt seem remote to me.</p>
<p>How on earth are Georgia’s teachers going to deal with the issue of Q, the predecessor texts/stories influencing the Torah, the history surrouding Isaiah that would cause him to, basically, invent the idea of bad things happening as a result of God’s punishment, the transformation of YHWH from limited war god who can’t find people hiding in the hills to the one and only (see Isaiah, above), etc.? How can they possibly do that with a bunch of religious fundamentalist kids sitting in the classrooms?</p>
<p>Some teacher is going to be fired over this, and we’re going to get a monkey trial out of it.</p>
<p>Now, the high school most of my children have attended does have a Bible class and it’s taught very well with absolutely no public friction of which I’m aware. But I don’t live in Georgia.</p>
<p>Because, of course, everyone in the South is a mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, sub-human bigot who would rather swill moonshine and see a good lynching than do just about anything else than watch Dukes of Hazzard reruns, right? </p>
<p>"Because, of course, everyone in the South is a mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, sub-human bigot who would rather swill moonshine and see a good lynching than do just about anything else than watch Dukes of Hazzard reruns, right? "</p>
<p>Not ‘everyone’, but most state legislators.</p>
<p>Fair enough. Please develop the above statement. What is it about the “Bible Belt” that would prevent the Bible being taught as literature? I must have misunderstood you.</p>
<p>I (obviously) live in the south. I work in a Methodist church (probably can guess my job by my screen name). I am not sure who exactly you would characterize as “fundamentalist”. Howver, I AM sure the people I know in public schools around here have much better sense and sensibility than you chose to give them credit for.</p>
<p>And please stop making such broad statements about us “southerners”.</p>
<p>What about the people you don’t know? Not one teacher is going to overstep the boundaries and use the text to prostelytize? Not one parent is going to create problems if the curriculum deviates from his or her beliefs about the Bible?</p>
<p>Sorry, but my experience suggests otherwise. It’s only going to take a handful of people to create huge problems. It would indeed be a broad statement for anyone to claim no problems are forseeable.</p>
<p>My reason for asking WashDad if he knew Southern fundamentalists wasn’t to make a broad statement, but because I was genuinely curious. I believe that the experiences of people like me and (apparently) like Tarhunt shouldn’t be discarded lightly, and I was curious if WashDad had some counter-examples.</p>
<p>Enough to suggest that there will be absolutely NO problems? No prostelytizing? No parents complaining?</p>
<p>I think that would make you counterintuitivemom, not churchmusicmom.</p>
<p>FACT: Certain widely popular fundamentalist leaders teach their followers that the separation of church and state is a lie and that Christians are to have dominion over all areas of public life. To deny that this teaching is likely to create conflict by at least some individuals when something as emotion-laden as a Bible curriculum is added to the public schools seems naive at best.</p>
<p>I think everyone’s interest would be better served by trying to identify upfront the problems that are likely to arise and brainstorming potential solutions in advance, rather than insisting that there’s not going to be a problem and waiting for all heck to break loose.</p>
<p>Appreciate your arguing for me,. if that’s what you’re doing. I assume this is over something WashDad said? I’ve blocked him, so I don’t know how he responded (mercifully ignorant, I’m sure).</p>
<p>Churchmusicmom:</p>
<p>The Bible Belt simply has more fundamentalists per capita than most other places. Where I live, maybe 5% of all people are fundamentalists (just a guess). They occasionally make a stink over sex ed or whatever, but they’re not powerful enough to actually get much done.</p>
<p>The part of the South where I grew up, on the other hand, is almost certainly majority fundamentalist, and I would guess that it’s higher than 70%. There’s already been a case in my county where a teacher was fired for teaching about 100 creation myths instead of just the one in Genesis. She sued and won. </p>
<p>I just don’t see any way that a school board somewhere in Geogia won’t end up firing a teacher for, say, pointing out that the Ten Commandments are just rehashes of earlier law codes, or that Abraham couldn’t have met Hittites when he came through Hurria. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d bet money that this will end in a lawsuit, somewhere.</p>
<p>(Note: I was brought up fundamentalist, and most of my family back there still is.)</p>
<p>Turns out, this is already creating controversy. </p>
<p>Georgia turned down the bible curriculum that’s been endorsed by mainstream Protestant denominations and even some Jewish groups (the Bible Literacy Project), in favor of the curriculum that’s endorsed by prominent dominionist D. James Kennedy and by Pastor John Hagee–who is openly calling for a nuclear strike against Iran as part of God’s plan to bring about the End Times.</p>
<p>Since when did “controversy” become the academic litmus test to determine high school curricula?</p>
<p>Should evolution not have been taught because it was bound to be controversial?</p>
<p>The inconsistencies in those now moaning and pleading the case of “controversy” is not at all unlike those that did the same over the potential misuses of evolutionary theory. My eleventh grade bio teacher was not at all shy in expounding upon the significance Darwinism represented to the stories of biblical creation. </p>
<p>I?m sure so proselytizing goes on all the time; though it is probably not the norm in the teaching of Darwinian Evolution, should we avoid such a messy subject because of a few zealots and a bit of controversy? </p>
<p>Are Southerners unworthy or simply not intellectually up to the job? The “ladies” above do protest too much.</p>
<p>For that matter, should we avoid all subjects that can be controversial? </p>
<p>How about global warming?
The use of the atomic bomb during WWII?
Homosexual rights? Or even sexual education? The list is endless, my dear.</p>
<p>Does controversy perhaps bring on the drafts, fainting spells? Why not pitch them into your “see no evil” pile? …but then, what happens to the love of knowledge for its own sake?</p>
<p>I find that such intellectual inconsistencies as have been exposed above have folded within them the greater good of laying bare the narrow ideologies of those that engage in them; but then, I am quite the optimist.</p>
<p>Athens and Jerusalem…for those interested in their culture and history, it is difficult to make sense of one without the other</p>
<p>Dorothy Parker X, with all due respect, less than 50 miles from where I sit, a public school teacher forced a second grade Muslim student to stand up and lead the class in the recitation of a Protestant prayer. This was done without the parent’s consent, against the parent’s wishes, and was part of an everyday prostelytizing, mandated Protestant worship program in that classroom. When a Catholic adult in the school finally spoke up, the whistleblower’s career was nearly ruined…and the teacher who was forcing her religion on kids against their parents’ wishes? Lionized in the community and in the school.</p>
<p>I would not be nearly so concerned about this if the curriculum chosen hadn’t been the one hand-picked by the dominionists and the end timers over a more widely accepted curriculum. </p>
<p>I don’t think saying that because some parents wish to impose their religious beliefs over science education, and we teach science anyway, it justifies running the risk that some teachers and some parents will succeed in imposing their religious beliefs in a Bible curriculum.</p>
<p>All the more reason to not give up the debate over teaching one of the two pillars of Western Art, Music, Literature, Democracy, Capitalism, and Culture generally to the yahoos.</p>
<p>It does the earnest student a diservice to say it is better not to know than to risk malfeasance and rogue behavior by those who do.</p>
<p>Talk about throwing the baby out for the sake of the bathwater.</p>
<p>Apply the same line of reasoning to everything else and we will all be nothing more than a bunch of know-nothing knuckleheads.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>No, that’s just intellectually lazy, my dear.</p>
<p>What do you think the purpose was of rejecting a Bible curriculum with mainstream, echumenical support in favor of the one endorsed by the dominionist extremists who reject the separation of church and state?</p>
<p>I don’t believe that anyone in this thread has proposed a ban on teaching the Bible in any school. To the extent there is disagreement, it is between those who view the Georgia Legislature’s sudden interest in the pillars of Western Culture with skepticism, and those who welcome it. I am in the suspicious camp. I would not have thought an act of the Georgia Legislature was necessary to permit high school teachers and students to discuss the Bible in the context of its importance to “Western Art, Music, Literature, Democracy, Capitalism, and Culture generally.” So this thing strikes me as Intelligent Design Part II – i.e., an attempt to legitimize religious proselytism in public schools.</p>
<p>As a Jew who attended schools where Protestant bible readings, hymns, and prayers were regular features of the school day, I can attest both to the sense of alienation that can provoke, and to the more-than-compensating educational and spiritual benefits. However, (a) my parents chose it, (b) I chose it, and (c) the school also provided an intellectual atmosphere where it was permissible to question the literal truth of the Bible (and where, in fact, approximately no one actually believed in the literal truch of the Bible, or any other sacred text, so it was not much an issue) and to debate alternative interpretations.</p>
<p>Wow it is so horrific that the Bible is offered as an opinion. To think that a book that has had significant effect in our country and on the Western World should influence education is absurd. What’s that nice book about the child who has two lesbian parents? I would rather have my children hear about gay couples in preschool than hear anything about the Bible when they’re old enough to make their own decisions.</p>