Posts tagged "teaching bible in public schools"

“Should Both Evolution And Creationism Be Taught In Public Schools?”

Welcome back!

The controversies over teaching religion in public schools are especially acute on the topics of evolution and creationism. Various Christian groups advocate teaching creationism—recently renamed “intelligent design”—in public schools. Advocates want to counter what they regard as the false theory of evolution. Or, to use the phrase they repeat frequently, evolution is “just a theory.”  Read more…

“Teaching The Bible In Public Schools — The Bible Is Not A Textbook For Skills Training”

[This is the continuation of a series of posts beginning with "Should The Bible Be Taught In Public Schools?" about the decision by the Texas State Board of Education to authorize the teaching of an elective course on Bible in public high schools. It brings to the surface just about every question imaginable about the relationship between religion, politics, and the Bible.] Read more…

“Teaching The Bible In Public Schools: The Religious Elephant In The Living Room”

[This is the continuation of a series of posts beginning with "Should The Bible Be Taught In Public Schools?" about the decision by the Texas State Board of Education to authorize the teaching of an elective course on Bible in public high schools. This decision brings to the surface just about every question imaginable about the relationship between religion, politics, and the Bible.]

“A professor of comparative literature at The University of Texas at San Antonio and an individual expressed concern that the guidelines for teaching of the Bible in public schools are too vague and allow for the possibility of indoctrination rather than instruction.”  Comments

This comment exposes the core dilemma behind the attempt by the Texas State Board of Education to teach the religious book called the Bible without teaching it as a religious book.

The unnamed professor of comparative literature assumes that it is possible to instruct without indoctrinating. This is the false dichotomy that complicates the effort to teach the Bible in public schools.

The line between instruction and indoctrination might seem clear enough at first, but when you begin to ponder what these words actually mean, the line blurs. The truth is that teaching is never neutral and the best teachers are the ones who are most aware that they themselves are not neutral about any aspect of their subject matter.

This idea that any teacher can instruct without being doctrinal is the false dilemma behind this effort to teach a foundational religious document as something other than a religious book.The only way that this effort can succeed is by acknowledging at the outset that it is impossible to teach the Bible neutrally.

Bobby: “Psssst. Don’t tell anyone. It’s our secret! There’s an elephant in the living room, but we’re pretending it’s not really there and it’s not really an elephant.”
Billy: “But it smells and it’s enormous!”
Bobby: “Just ignore it. Maybe it will go away.”
http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/info2/a/aa061197.htm

In various 12-Step recovery programs, the “elephant in the living room” is a metaphor for denial. As I ponder long and hard about the task of teaching the Bible in public schools, I can think of no better metaphor for the effort to teach the Bible for its history and literature while attempting to ignore that it is a religious book.

The beginning of a solution for the conundrum the Texas State Board Of Education has created is to stop pretending that the elephant will go away.

In fact, the Bible is a religious book. It is sacred to Jews, to Christians, and Muslims. Every religious group has its own doctrines about the book, but that is exactly the point. The Bible is as doctrinal a book as books can be.

So then the question becomes: How can anyone teach a religious book in public schools in a way that does not attempt to indoctrinate students into any specific religious understanding of the book?

Now we are getting into the tricky stuff. And this is where the quality of teaching becomes so critical.

Before we can consider the problems of teaching the Bible, we need to consider the problems of teaching anything. Let’s go back to the words “indoctrinate” and “instruct.”

In common speech, “instruction” sounds neutral and “indoctrinate” sounds biased, but when you go deeper, you realize that it is impossible to teach anything without being “doctrinal.” 

Let’s start with the words themselves.

• “Instruction” comes from the word “structure.” Instruction teaches something about the structure of a topic.
• “Indoctrination” comes from the word “doctrine.” It has the same root as the word doctor. A doctor teaches doctrine. Usually, “doctrine” refers to a body of teachings representing a specific set of beliefs.

As a teacher and student of language, I am fascinated by the concept of “in” as the prefix for both of these words.

• When you are “in-structed,” you enter “into” a specific structure of knowledge about a topic at the same time the structure of knowledge of that topic becomes part of you.
• When you are “in-doctrinated,” you enter “into” into a specific set of teachings (doctrines) at the same time the doctrines become part of you.

When you master a topic, the merging has become complete. The knowledge has become part of your “structure” and the “structure” of knowledge has become part of you. The set of teachings has become part of you and you have become part of the teachings. 

To put it another way, the set of doctrines has become part of your structure. “Instruction” has become “indoctrination.”

Even though this might be a bit too “woo-woo” here, my point is that the line between instruction and indoctrination is not as distinct as the professor of comparative literature implies. 

The Germanic root of the word “learn” is “to follow in the tracks of.” When you learn, you follow the tracks of a teacher who lays down a set of tracks for you. This means that there is nothing neutral about the teaching process. Every teacher has biases, points of view, and intentions as the teacher leads students “in” the way of mastery.

The major difference between good teachers and bad teachers is that the best teachers don’t pretend they are neutral and they are honest with their students about their lack of neutrality. They identity their own biases and they teach their students to recognize biases in themselves and others.

This is the art and science of teaching, whether the subject matter is the Bible, algebra, or English literature. And this is why the effort by the Texas State Board of Education is off track. It is trying to ignore the religious elephant in the living room that will not go away.

It is possible for good teachers to teach the Bible as a religious book without indoctrinating anyone into a particular religious point of view.

This will be the topic of my next post on this subject.

Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson

“Teaching The Bible In Public Schools…The Odd Couple of Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament”

This is the continuation of a series of posts beginning with “Should The Bible Be Taught In Public Schools?” about the decision by the Texas State Board of Education to authorize the teaching of an elective course on Bible in public high schools. It brings to the surface just about every question imaginable about the relationship between religion, politics, and the Bible. Read more…