The school board in a small town in Michigan, facing popular demand, is wrestling with the idea of adding a course to its curriculum focusing on the Bible.
A yearlong dispute over whether to add a religious group’s Bible class at small-town Frankenmuth High School in rural Michigan comes to a head at Monday’s school board meeting.
At issue is whether the proposed curriculum conforms to a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision barring public schools from indoctrinating children in religion but upholding the right to teach about religion.
The dispute in Frankenmuth, about 75 miles north of Detroit, is the latest skirmish in a nationwide battle between religious conservatives and church-state separationists that has stretched from Fort Myers and Miami, Fla. to Camden, N.J.; North Kansas City, Mo.; Kewaksum, Wis.; and Westcliffe, Colo.
The school board will get a report Monday from a curriculum committee, made up of teachers and administrators, and will decide whether to adopt the proposed class, Pendleton said. He said he doubts the board will do so.
One year ago, hundreds of Frankenmuth parents and students asked their Board of Education to offer a Bible course based on materials from the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools.
What if the town was full of flat-earthers or Holocaust-deniers? Should the numbers sway the content of public education?
The Greensboro, N.C.-based council says its curriculum conforms to the law. But People for the American Way and the American Civil Liberties union say its materials illegally promote religion.
“It’s religious right people who want to impose a theocracy in this country,” said Judith Schaeffer, deputy legal director of Washington-based People for the American Way. Her group has urged Frankenmuth to reject the class.
National council lawyer Mike Johnson vigorously defended his group’s course outline.
“It’s completely defensible. The approach is objective, certainly nondenominational,” Johnson said from Shreveport, La. “It presents the Bible as history and literature, but it does not proselytize.”
Nondenominational within a particular grouping of religions perhaps, but I suspect little would be included outside of the biblical viewpoint from a non-Christian perspective.
The curriculum, based on the King James Bible, includes topics ranging from “Periods of Hebrew History in the Old Testament” to “The Parables of Jesus — Literary Genre.”
In a letter to Frankenmuth school officials, Schaeffer said the course material teaches the Bible from a Protestant Christian perspective, rather than objectively, and teaches the creation story, Noah’s flood, Tower of Babel and resurrection of Jesus as history.
National Council does not release the names of districts that use its materials. But Johnson said 288 schools in 35 states have adopted its course outline.
At the eye of the storm is David Pendleton, president of the seven-member board on which he has served for 20 years. The district in Michigan’s rural Thumb has about 1,200 students, 500 of them at the high school.
“It’s stirred up about as much controversy as the abortion issue,” he said.
Founded in the mid-19th century by Lutheran missionaries to the Indians, and followed by German pioneer farmers, the Bavarian-themed tourist town of 4,600 remains a conservative community, Pendleton said.
As far as most board members are concerned, teaching the Bible at Frankenmuth High School would be a good thing, he said.
“I would love to see it. Other board members would love to do it. But can we do it legally? I don’t think so. But, we’ll see,” he said.
I cannot believe a school board member is actually stating that legality is the only thing driving the question. Strike that — I have no problem believing it. Who cares about the integrity of the education they’re elected to protect?
The dispute came to a boil at a Jan. 13 school board hearing, when parents Marcia and Robert Stoddard submitted petitions signed by about 1,200 parents and students asking for the course, The Saginaw News reported.
There was a time in high school when I might have signed this. Who knows where I would be now with the possibility of this added indoctrination?
This is why high school is not the place for such an issue in exclusion. By that, I mean the impact or beleifs of religions can rightfully be touched upon in history or philosophy classes, but there is no need to focus on just one at this stage and in such a public forum, be it supposedly for literary, historical or philosophical reasons. This is especially true when alternative religions are not granted the same exposure.
About 100 people filled the Rittmueller Middle School cafeteria, with shouts breaking out at one point between an avowed atheist and a course supporter.
“It’s our history, and we must accept it,” the paper quoted high school student Dan Redford as telling the board. “It would be a crime to stop students from learning about our world.”
Classmate Brandon Bierlein disagreed, saying, “It’s best to leave the Bible to the pastors.”
While opposing the National Council on Bible Curriculum’s course, People for the American Way says that public school instruction about religion and the Bible is legal and desirable.
“Schools of course can teach students about the Bible, about the Quran, about people’s beliefs,” said Schaeffer of People for the American Way. “The issue is how do you approach this material.”
Religion lies at the center of American society, and an educational system that ignores religion renders the nation’s history incomprehensible, said Charles Kriker, founder of the journal Religion and Education and a retired professor at Iowa State University.
“You really can’t understand things if you exclude that factor,” he said from Ames, Iowa. “Just because something is controversial doesn’t mean you have to ignore it.”
I only occasionally agree with the ACLU and, when I do, I usually feel a need to cleanse myself afterwards.
They are right in this case, though. What if the course, popularly demanded, is implemented and peer pressure is placed upon its enrollment? What if I move my future family there and my children are pressured to take such a course with no courses available for contradictory views?
At the age of high school students and those younger, the public responsibility towards religion should be towards protecting the reasonable rights of the family and the church within their own domain. It should not be one of such blatant advocacy towards a particular indoctrination.