Digging a little deeper

In retrospect, calling people dumbasses before looking at the evidence myself is a bad way to go about offering opinions. I guess I'm lucky that I'm psychic and was right on every count.

I decided to check out the Texas Freedom Network's review of the curriculum mentioned in the NY Times article. It is written by Dr. Mark A. Chancey, a professor of biblical studies at Southern Methodist University.

His findings are available for download here in PDF format.

Stuff like:

Many of the sources the curriculum uses are nonacademic in nature. The curriculum includes several bibliographies of scholarly books that serve as recommended readings but often reflects little familiarity with the sources themselves. 3 On multiple occasions, it directs teachers and students to resources and Web sites that explicitly advocate sectarian claims — though the readers of the curriculum might not realize this until they consult those resources.

The curriculum also does not sufficiently make clear its dependence on its sources. In fact, it often cites no sources at all. When the curriculum does cite secondary sources, it does not explicitly state when it, in effect, reproduces them on a wordfor-word level. Such verbal similarities extend for lines, paragraphs, and even pages at a time. In one unit, 20 pages are virtually identical in wording to uncited articles posted online. All in all, the wording of nearly 100 pages of the curriculum — approximately a third of the book — is identical or nearly identical to the wordings of other publications, many of them not cited.

Some "scholarly work", huh? Some of us might actually call that plagiarism.

Oh and get this (emphasis mine):

Some of the curriculum’s pedagogical components are quite helpful, such as its map exercises, reading comprehension questions, quizzes, and recommendations of classic musical works inspired by biblical stories. Creative activities include preparing foods associated with the Jewish festival of Passover when the Exodus story is studied (p. 91-96) and writing a monologue describing Job’s feelings as he suffers (p. 157). Teachers might be reluctant to follow other suggestions, such as devoting 8-10 class periods to watching Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (p. 98) and 2-4 classes to viewing Ben Hur (p. 215).

Real good use of class time. Somehow, I don't think Kevin Smith's Dogma made it into the lesson plan, though.

Another gem that should make the Catholics amongst us happy.

The curriculum is not only generally Christian in orientation; it is specifically Protestant. The King James Version (KJV), a favorite among Englishspeaking conservative Protestants, is its standard. A statement on the opening page justifies this choice because of the KJV’s “historic use as the [emphasis mine] legal and educational foundation of America.”

This is where the wheels really fall off in the argument that we are a Christian nation. Those that make the argument that the majority's religion should be the state religion conveniently forget that their's is not the majority religion. There are roughly 60 million Roman Catholics in this country, by far the largest denomination.

And it goes on and on. Long story short, the people who came up with this curriculum were definitely pushing a conservative Protestant agenda and are trying to teach kids things that are factually wrong and/or illegal to teach.

Comments

[Nomie]

I think Bible study can be interesting and useful - my high school offered a Bible as Literature class, which my brother took and enjoyed enormously. But this is like Sunday school for high schoolers, not a legitimate religious studies course.

[bingsy]

You scored a link in the bookslut blog, which is not a bad thing. They get tons of hits a day: http://www.bookslut.com/blog/archives/2005_08.php#006272

[Abigail]

What a shame. The Bible is such a remarkable and important document - it encompasses literature, poetry, history, propaganda, law, theology, metaphor, and myth. I enjoyed my Bible classes in high school (mandatory in Israel, but with almost no religious slant) very much. It's too bad the students at this school won't have the opportunity to study the Bible as it should be studied.

[Nate]

That's what is so infuriating. This could have been such a good thing, but they are turning to stupidity and ignorance to teach their children. It is such a waste.