Texas District Approves High School Bible Curriculum
by Jim Brown
May 3, 2005
(AgapePress) - A Texas school district has voted to bring the Bible back into the classroom. The Ector County School Board in Odessa has approved a measure that allows district high schools offer an elective Bible study course -- this, after going 26 years without offering one.The curriculum for the class is developed by the North Carolina-based National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS). The Ector County School Board unanimously approved the course, which will be taught as a history or literature elective.
District spokeswoman Adela Vasquez says the move to adopt the course has generated a great deal of excitement in the community, as well as press coverage. At a recent board meeting, she notes, some 400 people turned out to support the Bible class.
"It was very heartwarming to see the masses of people that were here because they brought their children with them," Vasquez points out. "I think the one message they conveyed to the local media was that we're a family, and we're here together and we believe in the fact that this is a good option. So it was neat to see families together and involved like that, to make a political and also a moral statement."
The school district representative is somewhat surprised at the attention being given to a small Texas school district because of its decision to add a Bible curriculum. "There's approximately 298 school districts across our nation that have done this already," she points out, "and there's approximately 52 in the State of Texas. So I think we were all taken aback as to why the national interest. I think it's just timing. There seems to be a mood across the country that maybe we just need to rethink our priorities."
Vasquez adds that the district has yet to receive complaints from liberal groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union or similar organizations over the Bible class, but the Ector County School Board anticipates those gripes will likely come once the curriculum is implemented. She says the class will not be taught until the 2006-2007 school year.
While the ACLU and other liberal civil liberties groups have attacked Bible course curricula in public schools as an unconstitutional establishment of religion or an attempt to indoctrinate students with a religious viewpoint, NCBCPS president Elizabeth Ridenour disputes both notions. She contends that the course developed by her group is not only constitutional but intellectually rigorous. (See related article)
The curriculum, which conveys the content of the Bible as compared to literature and history, is concerned with education of students, the head of NCBCPS says -- not indoctrination. The central approach to the class, she explains, is to study the Bible as a foundation document of society -- an approach that she asserts is "altogether appropriate in a comprehensive program of secular education."
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
