Religious Indoctrination in Texas

[Modem Butterfly]

http://www.bakersfield.com/24hour/nation/story/2599357p-11053471c.html

Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller said her group looked at the course after the Odessa school board voted in April to offer the class. It asked Southern Methodist University biblical scholar Mark A. Chancey to review the curriculum.

Chancey's review found that the course characterizes the Bible as inspired by God, that discussions of science are based on the biblical account of creation, that Jesus is referred to as fulfilling Old Testament prophecy, and that archaeological findings are erroneously used to support claims of the Bible's historical accuracy.

He said the course also suggests the Bible, instead of the Constitution, be considered the nation's founding document.

"No public school student should have to have a particular religious belief forced upon them," the Rev. Ragan Courtney, pastor of The Sanctuary, a Baptist congregation in Austin, said at a news conference held by Texas Freedom Network.

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Not a surprise though *sigh*

[wli]

2. par for the course for the BFEE

As if peak oil, global economic collapse, global climatological catastrophe, and a mass extinction weren't enough, now we've got a global cultural collapse as well.

[rateyes]

3. A Baptist said that? Good.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

4. Here's more on Texas Freedom Network's work in this area

"As a national debate rages over the proper place for religion in public education, more and more public schools are adding elective courses in Bible literacy. When taught with credible materials and from a nonsectarian perspective, such courses are an appropriate and even laudable way to help students learn about history and literature. However, a report commissioned by the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund and prepared by Dr. Mark Chancey reveals that the country’s most aggressively marketed - and perhaps most widely used - Bible curriculum fails on both counts."
http://www.tfn.org/religiousfreedom/biblecurriculum/


This is who they are for those who don't know.

Texas Freedom Network

Founded in 1995, the Texas Freedom Network is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization of more than 23,000 religious and community leaders. Based in Austin, the Texas Freedom Network acts as the state’s watchdog, monitoring far-right issues, organizations, money and leaders. The organization has been instrumental in defeating initiatives backed by the religious right in Texas, including private school vouchers, textbook censorship and faith-based deregulation.

As the resource of record on the religious right in Texas, the Texas Freedom Network has become a trusted source for producers and reporters from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, National Journal, TIME, all major U.S. broadcast and cable news media, the BBC and the American Bar Association Journal. Texas Freedom Network spokespeople have appeared on ABC World News Tonight and Nightline, NBC Nightly News, NBC’s Today Show, Dateline NBC, FOX News and The O’Reilly Factor, 60 Minutes II, MSNBC’s Donahue, National Public Radio, and the BBC.
http://www.tfn.org/aboutus/


This is who/what they are opposing.

A program is underway to serve the public through educational efforts concerning a First Amendment right and religious freedom issue. This is to bring a state certified Bible course (elective) into the public high schools nationwide.

The curriculum for the program shows a concern to convey the content of the Bible as compared to literature and history. The program is concerned with education rather than indoctrination of students. The central approach of the class is simply to study the Bible as a foundation document of society, and that approach is altogether appropriate in a comprehensive program of secular education.

The world is watching to see if we will be motivated to impact our culture, to deal with the moral crises in our society, and reclaim our families and children.

Please help us to restore our religious and civil liberties in this nation.
http://www.bibleinschools.net/sdm.asp

(AgapePress) - Much to the chagrin of groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way, Bible curriculum classes are being taught in more than a thousand public high schools across the United States.

It is a controversial idea in much of postmodern America -- public schools teaching young people about the Judeo-Christian Bible. Associated Press reports that in Odessa, Texas, hundreds of people recently crowded into a school board meeting venue to weigh in on whether their district would add a Bible class to its high school curriculum. More than 6,000 residents had signed a petition in favor of the class, but others warned that the district would be flirting with litigation if it approved the addition.

The Odessa School Board voted unanimously to adopt the Bible class. Barring obstacles, the class could be added in 2006 and taught as a history or a literature course. A similar proposal in Frankenmuth, Michigan, developed into a year-long debate before that school board voted last January not to add the Bible class to its course offerings.

Some school districts are frightened off by the specter of lawsuits; nevertheless, Bible curriculum classes are now being taught in some 1,100 high schools in 300 school districts in 35 states across the nation -- and this is going on during school hours, for credit, with the Bible as the textbook. That is because those 300 school districts are currently offering a course called "The Bible as History and Literature," a course curriculum from the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS).
http://www.bibleinschools.net/media%20day/4-27-2005/News%20from%20Agape%20Press_files/News%20from%20Agape%20Press.htm

[Modem Butterfly]

5. Thanks for the background!

[bryant69]

6. I did, in fact, attend religious instruction in high school

But it was not state funded. If these churches are so hepped up to teach their kids about the bible (or their version of it, at any rate) why don't they pay for it themselves, instead of asking the Government to pay for it?

Bryant
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