Faith-based education is a must

Within the past five days, elements of the American political left have betrayed a vituperative, bitter, and non-compromising mind-set. Female public figures urge their fellow women (the unmarried) to avoid men who do not support the left’s agenda. A State governor signs a repeal of one of the last laws making a sexual sin a misdemeanor. And Alphabet Soup advocates, not satisfied with the law allowing their practices, try to kill those who won’t practice as they do. Through it all, people of faith don’t protest, in the mistaken belief that the Establishment Clause leaves them no grounds. To the contrary, people of faith do have grounds, not only to protest but to forbid actively. Those grounds are the simplest: God is Truth and The Truth. To make that point, faith-based education must again be the standard curriculum for America’s children.

Latest attempt at faith-based education

On Friday (November 22), the Texas Board of Education passed, 8-7, a new curriculum including Bible-based elementary-grade reading lessons. Daily Presser has details of the Bluebonnet Learning Curriculum.

Typical teaching of reading starts with Fun with Dick and Jane (the “Look-Say” method) and continues with strictly secular stories. The closest any pupil comes to stories teaching moral lessons is Aesop’s Fables. (Most famous of these: “The Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf!’”, teaching that lying is, at worst, unwise because it destroys credibility.)

Bluebonnet’s faith-based curriculum does use “The Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf!’” and such stories. It also inserts insights from the Bible for basic moral lessons. But it does so with such subtlety that no one, except someone “spoiling for a fight,” would catch the references. So a kindergarten Reading and Language Arts Unit titled “Serving our Neighbors” explicitly teaches the Golden Rule and the related maxim, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The Parable of the Prodigal Son appears as a first-grade-level story to share. At third grade-level, pupils learn about the ancient Roman Empire – including its relationship to Christianity. And at fifth grade, students start with poetry – and the poems include Psalm 23.

The LORD is my Shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures… Psalm 23:1-2, KJV

Bluebonnet presents the Bible as “a collection of ancient texts” that are fundamental to Jewish and Christian religions. That’s all very well, but it puts the Bible only on the level of Aesop, or perhaps of superior quality. Christian and Jew both know Scripture is Something more.

Challenges to this curriculum

Nor is the new curriculum a requirement. Instead the State will provide additional funding – $60 per student in the program.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) proudly announced the program:

Bluebonnet Learning will bring students back to the basics of education. These materials are voluntary & free for schools. We’ll also empower parents with access to the materials online. This is a critical step to provide students with the fundamentals to lead successful lives. Gov. Greg Abbott

Bluebonnet Learning will bring students back to the basics of education.

These materials are voluntary & free for schools. We’ll also empower parents with access to the materials online.

This is a critical step to provide students with the fundamentals to lead successful lives. pic.twitter.com/6hDoIhFpfT— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) November 22, 2024

Reaction to his announcement varied from the grateful to the skeptical to the openly hostile. But some did ask about a curriculum “more inclusive of Muslim and Jewish students.” (Actually the Psalms are an Old Testament poetry collection.) Another asked whether the Bluebonnet curriculum would be adaptable for homeschooling families.

Some of the hostility came from those critical of the shortchanging of other parts of public-school curriculum. But predictable opposition came from the Texas Democratic Party, the American Civil Liberties Union, and other usual suspects.

In a state as diverse as Texas, home to millions of people from countless faiths and beliefs, the Texas Republicans on the State Board of Education voted to incorporate Biblical teachings into the state curriculum—completely undermining religious freedom. This move has ultimately violated parents’ rights to guide their children’s faith while presenting teachers with additional needless challenges.

Our public schools should be focused on equipping students with the education and skills they need to succeed beyond grade school whether it’s pursuing a higher education or entering the workforce. The teaching of religious doctrine should stay in our places of worship where it belongs.

Texas Democratic Party Responds to Approval of Bible Study for Elementary School Curriculum

Read more: https://t.co/mQznxOK6B0 pic.twitter.com/c9uhmbJ909— Texas Democrats (@texasdemocrats) November 22, 2024

The Bluebonnet curriculum flagrantly disregards religious freedom, a cornerstone of our nation since its founding. The same politicians censoring what students can read now want to impose state-sponsored religion onto our public schools. We urge districts to reject this optional curriculum and uphold a public school education that honors the religious diversity and constitutional rights of Texas students. Caro Achar, Engagement Coordinator for Free Speech, ACLU

Parents and families, not politicians or government officials, should get to decide if, when, and how their children engage with religion. Rachel Laser, CEO, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State

Any of these organizations, and uncountable others (like the Freedom From Religion Foundation), might challenge the Bluebonnet curriculum in court.

This affair now becomes an absurd shame. The Bluebonnet Learning Curriculum is not a faith-based curriculum at all. It is certain an unabashedly American patriotic curriculum, with subtle additions of material from the Bible. But it’s a far cry from even the elementary-grade curriculum your editor once had in a public school. Your editor, in the fifth grade, learned Come, Ye Thankful People, Come by Henry Alford, as Thanksgiving approached.

Imagine litigating that in today’s courts! Yet sixty years of misguided precedent now require such litigation.

One more thing

The Texas Legislature has one problem it must address, just to keep any litigation out of its own courts. It has a Blaine Amendment, intended to forbid the State to “respect an establishment of religion.” Rep. James G. Blaine (R-Maine), Speaker of the House in 1875, first offered an amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

1. Forbidding all States to recognize religions, and also
2. Forbidding the government to recognize Catholic or other parochial schools as having a government role.

That Amendment fell short four votes in the Senate. So Blaine gallivanted across the country, urging States to amend their own Constitutions. Twelve States (including, ironically, Blaine’s native Maine) declined, but thirty-eight other States accepted, including Texas.

The Texas Legislature could and should propose a Constitutional amendment to repeal that text, as Louisiana did in 1973. Or Attorney General Paxton could countersue it away, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision forbidding States to discriminate against religion. Carson v. Makin, 596(2) U.S. 767 (2022). But to meet the challenge head-on, the Attorney General must urge the Supreme Court to expand the protections of religious liberty it put into place in the momentous October 2021 Term. Carson v. Makin let religious organizations and adherents have the same access to government largesse as have their secular counterparts. Kennedy v. Bremerton School District abolished the “Lemon Test” of secular applicability of lessons or faculty-led activities. But six other anti-religious precedents remain. Abingdon School District v. Schempp (1963) is the chief obstacle to the Texas curriculum.

The importance of faith-based education

CNAV offers another support for faith-based education: it is in the public interest. Furthermore, the forbidding of faith-based education is part of a larger conspiracy against rights. Evidence of that conspiracy surfaced abundantly after the Texas education vote. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.) signed a repeal of a 1907 law making adultery a Class B misdemeanor. At this year’s Torino Film Festival (Turin, Italy), Actress Sharon Stone inveighed against “uneducated” and “naive” Americans who elected Donald J. Trump President again. (Her evidence: such people do not travel abroad. Let her blame Biden administration and earlier policies that make overseas travel an unaffordable hassle.) An Alphabet Soup activist doused the daughter of Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake with soda pop. (This was a man identifying as a woman, though whether he’d undergone full surgical “transitioning” is unclear. Kari Lake’s daughter had been registering fellow college students to vote at the time.)

Two days ago, Bob Unruh at WorldNetDaily reported on a new French law saying it is unlawful to cite abortion as a cause of any person’s death.

Today, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) (and no relation to the Kennedys of Hyannisport, Massachusetts) gave his opinion of Sharon Stone and others of similar persuasion:

Here’s what I think. I think these people are goofy. They have the right to their opinion, but they’re just goofy. They hate George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head.

They think our kids ought to be able to change genders at recess. They carry around Ziploc bags of kale to give themselves energy. To me—to each his own. To me, kale tastes like I’d rather be fat. Now, these people are entitled to their opinion, but they have an unwarranted sense of moral and intellectual superiority.

They think they’re smarter and more virtuous than the American people. And they think we’re not real people. But we were, and we are real people.

And in this last election, we got real mad, and we sent a message, clearly, unequivocally. And my message to all my friends and my enemies in America is: Happy Thanksgiving, and stay deplorable, my friend. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.)

Sen. John Kennedy Delivers Unforgettable Response to Hollywood Name-Calling Trump Supporters

“Here’s what I think. I think these people are goofy. They have the right to their opinion, but they’re just goofy. They hate George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln… pic.twitter.com/KaiGRM4n3f— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) November 27, 2024

But winning elections isn’t enough. Those people consider themselves morally and intellectually superior because no one told them they were morally and intellectualy INFERIOR. No one had grounds – because Christians had quit the field and allowed those bad legal precedents to happen.

What a real faith-based curriculum would look like

Faith-based education properly starts early in a child’s life. Reading lessons (after the phonetic method; time to ditch Fun With Dick and Jane) should definitely emphasize moral precept. But with those lessons should come the admonition that the Bible is more than “a collection of ancient texts.” Aesop’s Fables are “ancient texts,” so the pupil must learn what makes the Bible better than those.

In teaching the Psalms, teach them in context. Each of them has its origin in a particular moment in the life of King David – or Judge Moses. Those two were real people. Honor their memories as one would those of other historical figure. And why limit the reading lessons to one Psalm, even Psalm 23? The Proverbs are another rich store of moral precepts.

Earth and life science (biology) need reform as well. In biology, teach generic creation – the creation of “kinds” of life. (The Biblical “kind” corresponds roughly to either the conventional genus or the next higher organization level, the family.) And in Earth science, teach the Global Flood as the very real event that shaped the Earth’s crust. To acquaint the student with conventional paleontology, and the application of nuclear physics to sample dating, is certainly appropriate. But let’s complete the lesson by treating the generation of radioactive and other oddball isotopes as a consequence of the Flood. If that sounds too radical, remember that conventional Lyellian geology was just as outlandish. Before Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity, secular scientists believed the Earth infinitely old!

Resolving contradictions

This last illustrates the most important reason to include generic creation and Flood studies in science. To contradict the Bible is to cast doubt upon It. That doubt undermined America’s foundations, and thus caused the moral collapse we observe today.

The Bible says not to murder, cheat, steal, lie, or covet – but the political left encourages all these things. A thief is an irregular wealth-redistribution agent, and a murderer (especially an abortionist) is an irregular population thinner. Under philosophical “diversity,” murder and theft are wrong for some but not for others. No society can remain (or become) sound while giving currency to such a twisted precept.

But moral lessons, to be sufficiently forceful and effective, must be consistent. For that reason, the entire model of the world must be consistent. We can’t derive moral precept from a creation narrative some insist is symbolic only. The Grand Evolutionary Paradigm teaches that (to quote Hobbes), life was always “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” That mind-set is nothing but a blank check, not only for sin but also for crime. Indeed the very concept crime can have no meaning absent the concept of a Creator, Conceptor, and Chief Architect. For That Person is the source of law – from the Laws of Motion and Gravity, to the Laws of the Jungle and Averages, to the laws that govern a sound society.

That makes faith-based education, toward which Texas took a valuable first step, essential.