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Texas School District approves Bible class

How shall we characterize the Song of Solomon? If the language used is sufficiently flowery and elegant, does that change it from verbal porn to literature?

What if I expressed desire for my love's delectable breasts? What if I just said I wanted to feel her melon-sized gabongas?

Song of Solomon contains *both* kinds of writing. Is it literature or porn?
 
CFLarsen said:
T'ai Chi,

What do you think should be tossed out in favor of a Bible class?

A biology class? A physics class? A math class?

You have X classes during a semester. When you add a class, you have to take another out.

Something's gotta go. What class did you have in mind?
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There are two types of classes in high school: required and elective. Room is always made in each student's schedule for a certain number of elective courses, usually one or two per semester. But the student has no choice about the required classes; he or she must take them in order to graduate.

Students are not allowed to substitute electives for core requirements. So what you're actually "giving up" is only some other elective course. There are far too many elective courses for any student to take them all, so you'll always be "missing" something, no matter what you choose.
 
Melendwyr said:
How shall we characterize the Song of Solomon? If the language used is sufficiently flowery and elegant, does that change it from verbal porn to literature?

What if I expressed desire for my love's delectable breasts? What if I just said I wanted to feel her melon-sized gabongas?

Song of Solomon contains *both* kinds of writing. Is it literature or porn?
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My church(es) always taught that SoS was a song of religious devotion, and all the things about breasts and pretty rear-ends and such were just allegorical references to God.

Riiiiiiiight.
 
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slingblade said:
Students are not allowed to substitute electives for core requirements. So what you're actually "giving up" is only some other elective course. There are far too many elective courses for any student to take them all, so you'll always be "missing" something, no matter what you choose.
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Wrong end of the stick. It's not a question of fitting the courses in to the students' schedules, it's a question of fitting the courses into the teachers' schedules and the available resources.

The faculty is limited and so are the classrooms and textbooks. If Mrs. Throatwarbler-Mangrove is teaching "The Bible as Literature" during second period, she's obviously NOT teaching "Contemporary Film Studies" or "Geosciences" or "European History" during that time. Which means that students who are interested in European History don't get to take it at all, unless you hire another teacher, which costs money that most school districts don't have.

Every stupid elective you put into a curriculum is one less available intelligent elective. Of course, that cuts the other way, too -- every intelligent elective you put in is one less available stupid elective. That's the question being asked. What course are you willing to give up -- what would Mrs. T-W be teaching otherwise -- in order to offer "the Bible as Literature"?
 
Pyrrho said:
The textbook was specifically planned for such courses.

http://www.bibleliteracy.org/Site/index2.htm

Watch the tail wag the dog.
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I read an excerpt from the text in the Dallas Morning News. It was discussing the Bible and the Founding period and read like a cut and paste from David Barton's "Wallbuilders" website. I have problems with this with regard to the content, but I can't really object to it for legal reasons - despite the fact that I know it's a back door effort at evangelism, etc.
 
ceo_esq said:
Due to a likely oversight by the Framers, we have no Separation Clause. We only have the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause.
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I believe that the establishment clause is, in effect, the separation clause. Without separation, you have the beginnings of establishment. The framers were so serious about this issue that it was the very first thing in the bill of rights. If they just would have added that ONE friggin’ word, none of this craziness would even be possible…….:boggled:

As for this particular matter...

I am all for a historic study and evaluation of the bible in school.

The more people who study its development and history, the fewer Christians we will have as a result.....

I would not like to see a class that revolved around a non-secular text like the one shown above, however. Just a textbook with the facts, containing no spiritual bias.

The Georgia senate has just introduced a bill for the same type of class... I'd post a link to the news story, but I can't because I don't have enough posts yet... ;) You'll have to cut and paste, adding the www, change dot to .


macon dot com/mld/macon/news/politics/13657916.htm
 
drkitten said:
Wrong end of the stick. It's not a question of fitting the courses in to the students' schedules, it's a question of fitting the courses into the teachers' schedules and the available resources.

The faculty is limited and so are the classrooms and textbooks. If Mrs. Throatwarbler-Mangrove is teaching "The Bible as Literature" during second period, she's obviously NOT teaching "Contemporary Film Studies" or "Geosciences" or "European History" during that time. Which means that students who are interested in European History don't get to take it at all, unless you hire another teacher, which costs money that most school districts don't have.

Every stupid elective you put into a curriculum is one less available intelligent elective. Of course, that cuts the other way, too -- every intelligent elective you put in is one less available stupid elective. That's the question being asked. What course are you willing to give up -- what would Mrs. T-W be teaching otherwise -- in order to offer "the Bible as Literature"?
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I know. There were (at least) two ways to look at the question, so I picked one: the student's schedule.

Talking about the school's curriculum, I still stand by the position that one can't teach everything, so as long as core classes aren't threatened, I'm not much concerned if Bible Lit is taught as an elective. I take exception to the notion that teaching the Bible as literature is stupid.

Without an understanding of the Bible, including its history and "sources," students cannot fully understand (comprehend, relate to, connect with, etc.) much classic western literature. I defy one to "get" Dante without ever having encountered the Bible, much less Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, etc.

To me, not having a Bible as Literature class is a lot like not teaching mythology just because those myths used to be someone's religion.

I mentioned this thread to one of my colleagues who is also atheist, and she informed me that our (non-Texas) school could also teach Bible as Literature if it desired, and that she wished it would. It would make her job generally easier, because she would no longer have to teach Bible as Literature while teaching classic literature.

IOW, it's already being done quietly in many HS classrooms, and some folks simply aren't aware.
 
www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/politics/13657916.htm

I have over 15 posts now, so here is the link I talked about above.....:)


I have since downloaded the text book sample in PDF - what an absolute JOKE! If they tried to put this POS class in my local high school, I'd initiate the lawsuit myself. It's not even a thinly veiled attempt at evangelistic enterprises in public schools........It's right out in the open :mad:
 
Darat said:
I thought most protestant bibles excluded The Wisdom of Solomon form the OT?
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The Song of Solomon and the Wisdom of Solomon are two different books, aren't they? At any rate, the SoS is in every Prot Bible I've ever seen, but WoS isn't.
 
Darat said:
Of course - my mistake.
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:)

Say, totally OT, is your cat laughing at a joke you told, or one of his own? I hate it when my cat laughs harder at his own jokes than at mine. And his are always about dogs...it gets so old.
 
The study resource that Pyrro linked to is a little over the top sometimes. The pdf does not allow quoting, but toward the end it has an odd paragraph about the Bible containing secret keys to meaning, and resulting in higher college entrance scores.

There are some things mentioned in the introduction I would call "religious". They come across as sort of "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" statements. The comments on date reckoning are typical.

Otherwise I'm happy with kids knowing about the Bible. I worry a little about future unbelievers not knowing anything. The more the better. :)
 
Religion in schools?

slingblade said:
I fully agree, and I am a teacher of English, and an atheist who frankly has issues with religion in schools. But as long as they teach it as literature, or even as mythology, I'm fine with it.
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Then you must also take issues with the secularism that is taught in our school system, for secularism is a religion also known as a belief system.
 
François Lesueur said:
Then you must also take issues with the secularism that is taught in our school system, for secularism is a religion also known as a belief system.
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I must, must I?

I teach English. My main concern is that my students understand grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and that they can write reasonably well in both fiction and non-ficiton genres.

I don't teach religious skepticism or indifference. I don't have time, for one thing, and I'm not really allowed to teach religion pro or con, except as it occurs in mythology, which I also teach, along with American literature.
Today in Am Lit we begin Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

I don't give a hang what my students or fellow teachers believe. As long as they don't try to force me to believe it, I'm happy to leave them in peace.

However, I am required by my district to teach critical thinking skills. I use Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit. My personal experience shows that critical thinking can possibly lead to a questioning of religious concepts. So would your suggestion be instead to teach them not to think?

Oh, dear, dilemmas and decisions.....
 
Separation of Church and State

Freedom of religion is the total absence of any type of attempt by a human (as opposed to divine) authority, such as the government, to influence our opinions regarding the manner and methods we employ to discharge the duties that we owe to our Creator.

Fred
 
I'm sorry, but this is just the sort of thing that makes skeptic look aloof, elitist, and full of themselves.

The course is specifically aimed at teaching the bible as literature and history. I think it's an excellent idea because, among other things, it's perfectly clear that most fundamentalists are unaware of what the bible (both OT and NT) actually says. Having actually read the bible cover to cover, I discovered that virtually every famous bible story is far more detailed, complicated, and interesting than the "PG" version everybody knows about.

So what do people here say? Well, the first reaction is that a). It just has to take time and effort from really important stuff like math and science, and b). It's surely just a cover for religious indoctrinization, since it will be taught in Texas, and we know what those sort of people are like. All this without the slightest bit of evidence for either propostion.

Imagine, for a moment, that somebody said: "It's nice they want to teach science to kids in the inner city, but that will just take time away from things they really need to learn, like home economics and car repair; and besides, it will be taught by black people, and we all know they'll just use the science class to preach their belief in voodoo--you know what they're like!".

Sorry guys, but you're simply showing you are prejudiced snobs, that's all.
 
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