A member of the Texas House of Representatives, Warren Chisum (a Republican from Pampa), has introduced a bill that would require Texas’s public high schools to offer an elective class on the Bible if enough students (twelve, I think) ask for it. The bill calls for the class to be taught in “an objective and nondevotional manner” and states that it “may not disparage or encourage a commitment to a set of religious beliefs.”
I might support such classes if they were taught by teachers with scholarly training in a relevant discipline and were truly critical and non-religious. (Though it hardly seems the most pressing need when the resources could better be spent on improving the teaching of math, science, and writing.) But it isn’t hard to imagine how the scenario will play out in the average small town in Texas. After the school board fails to land one of the legions of Biblical scholars who want to teach high school students, some zealous citizen will stand up and say, “Well, Brother Thompson down at the First Baptist Church knows a great deal about the Bible. He even got a degree from Oral Roberts University. He’d be a good influence on those kids, too.” And soon the class will be non-religious only in the sense that it will not be actively devotional, and maybe even that’s being optimistic. I don’t want to play mindreader, but it would not shock me to learn that the bill’s authors are hoping for just such an outcome.
I can’t help thinking, however, that this sort of thing might backfire on its supporters in the long run. One of the best ways to get most teenagers to think something is square, useless, and boring is to make them study it, take tests on it, and then grade them on it. Chisum might at least consider the possibility that his classes could raise a generation who consider the Bible to be as exciting as a chemistry textbook.
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