Texas education officials on Friday approved a new elementary school curriculum that draws from the Bible, the final step of a contentious effort to expand religious instruction in the state.
The reading and language arts curriculum, which will be optional for schools, could serve as a model for conservative Christian leaders in other states. Its approval came as Oklahoma’s superintendent seeks to compel all educators to teach from the Bible, and as Louisiana fights in courts to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms.
Starting in August, the new Texas curriculum, for kindergarten through fifth grade, will be available to districts. The state serves more than two million elementary students in its public schools.
The curriculum incorporates into English lessons stories from the Bible such as Jesus and his Sermon on the Mount, the parable of the Prodigal Son and the Old Testament tale of Esther.
It has ignited a fierce backlash. Hundreds of Texans protested for months at meetings of the State Board of Education, which sets standards for what students are taught and approves a range of materials. The state’s largest teachers’ union and many parents — including some Christians — argue that the lessons blur the line between instruction and proselytizing, and present scripture as factual truth to children as young as 5.
But Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, and other supporters of the new program say that the Bible is a fundamental text in American history and that students’ reading comprehension will suffer without a robust knowledge of its stories and themes.
About half of Texas students in third through eighth grade read below their grade levels on state tests; the state’s education commissioner says he is hopeful that the new curriculum will improve their outcomes.
On Friday, the Texas State Board of Education, which is controlled by Republicans, approved the curriculum in a narrow 8-to-7 vote, with three Republicans joining the board’s four Democratic members in an effort to reject it. The state’s individual districts and schools ultimately decide what materials to teach, but they are financially incentivized to adopt curriculums approved by the board.
Will Hickman, a Republican board member from Houston who voted to approve the lessons, said at a meeting earlier this week that there was a “line between indoctrination and evangelism and education.”
“In my view, these stories are on the education side,” Mr. Hickman said, adding that “there’s religious concepts like the Good Samaritan, the Golden Rule and Moses that all students should be exposed to” for cultural literacy.
The Texas Education Agency, which oversees public education in the state, released the new curriculum in the spring, after the state enacted a law directing the agency to develop its own free textbooks. Religion makes up a relatively small portion of the curriculum’s overall content.
But some board members who voted against the curriculum on Friday worried that the lessons that delve into Christianity appear far more often than the lessons that cover other faiths. They noted that it could violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which bars the government from making laws “respecting an establishment of religion,” and could draw lawsuits.
Others argued that Texas was more focused on promoting a Christian worldview than tackling the academic needs of schoolchildren.
Evelyn Brooks, a Republican board member whose district includes the Fort Worth suburbs, said that the curriculum was untested and represented a “radically different teaching methodology.”
“This does water down what the true purpose of English language arts and reading is,” Ms. Brooks, who voted against the curriculum, said at a meeting earlier this week. “We want children to learn how to read and write well and do math without experimenting on them. They deserve that.”
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