By Dotty Griffith Public Education Director
A religion professor who also is a retired Methodist Church elder has taken an exhaustive look at the Bible curriculum being taught in Lubbock public schools in a report titled, “A TEACHER'S NIGHTMARE? The Lubbock Independent School District's Bible Course.”
A.W. Martin, Professor of Religion Emeritus at Oklahoma City University who now lives in Lubbock, has closely examined the curriculum and supplemental text, The Bible in History and Literature (Greensboro, NC: National Council of Bible Curriculum in Public Schools [NCBCPS], 2007).
Martin concludes that the course does not fulfill state law requirements that the role of the Bible in history and literature be taught without favoring one religion over another. Instead of teaching the Bible in “an objective and academic manner,” the NCBCPS curriculum “recommends a substantial number of resources that have little academic merit and represent a bias that has no place in a public school classroom.”
He cites a recent study by Amanda Colleen Brown in the Baylor Law Review. She concluded that the material from the NCBCPS fails to satisfy all three prongs of the "Lemon Test," which courts use to judge the Constitutionality of government involvement with religion: A statute or practice "must have a secular legislative purpose," its main "effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion," and "it must not foster an excessive entanglement with religion."
Martin predicts that teachers will face serious difficulties in attempting to fulfill these objectives. He adds, “The teacher who takes the objectives seriously, even if the authors of the curriculum seem rather casual about them, will face at least a few sleepless hours while searching for supplementary materials and perhaps will have a few bad dreams if adequate resources cannot be easily found.”
He concludes the NCBCPS curriculum is a teacher’s nightmare and should cause bad dreams for school administrators and parents as well.
