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The Why

Why The Bible Needs to Be Taught Academically in Public Schools

The study of the Bible was an essential part of public education in America since the early 17th century settlements from Europe up until 1963 when the U.S. Supreme Court in Abbington v. Schempp decided that the devotional study of the Bible should no longer be taught in public schools. As a result of that ruling, public schools basically stopped teaching the Bible academically even though the teaching of the Bible academically was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. According to research, only 8 percent of public schools teach the Bible and it is almost always in an elective course where a maximum of 25 percent of the class takes the course. Thus, only 2 percent of public school students study the Bible and 98 percent are not. The result is a high level of Bible among young people. 

Biblical illiteracy is a very large, but mostly undiscussed problem. It is a problem for business because without people believing in the Bible, there are no shared core values such as integrity and caring for others. It is a problem for the academy because without the Bible, it is really hard to understand fully the English language, English literature, history, art, music and culture. 

Research shows that when people stop relating the Bible to the world around them, they stop reading the Bible. Conversely, once people start to see how the Bible has impacted the world around them, they find the Bible very interesting to read and become very engaged. For example, with students who generally have very little knowledge of the Bible at the beginning of the high school course using the textbook The Bible and Its Influence, 72 percent of students state that they are continuing to read the Bible. 

For young people to study the Bible in public schools four things need to happen: 
  1. For the Bible to be introduced to young people, most of whom according to research, have little knowledge of Bible, the academic teaching of the Bible in public schools is absolutely essential. By teaching the Bible academically in public schools, students of all faiths and no faith at all can be introduced to the Bible. Many of these students would be resistant to a devotional introduction of the Bible. 
  2. The two reports below highlight solid reasons for the academic study of the Bible. 
  3. The connection to the influence of the Bible is critically important to keep the students attention. 
  4. Teaching the Bible academically engages many young people in the Bible that would otherwise not be engaged in the Bible.
From the 4th century to the 18th century, business, the Church and the academy worked closely together. So many good things happened during this time period starting in the 4th century with Cathedral schools where girls and young women for the first time in the West were educated alongside boys and young men, schools became common in the 9th century under Charlemagne, the university was re-invented in the 12th century at the University of Bologna, University of Paris, Oxford and Cambridge. Then, science took off as an exploration of the world that God had created. As missionary work increased from the 16th century, the Bible was taken to many foreign lands, including India, where it was translated into local language, preserved those languages, was the inspiration for a dictionary and led to the establishment of schools and universities. In the 16th to 18th century starting in Europe and spreading to America, the notion of individual freedom and a government of the people as contrasted with monarchies evolved. All of this happened under the influence of the Bible.
Two Research Reports

There are two reports funded by the John Templeton Foundation that outline the need to know the Bible academically for students graduating from high school.

The first report is “Bible Literacy Report: What do American teens need to know and what do they know?” in this study of 41 of the top high school English teachers from diverse background nationally, said Bible knowledge gives students a distinct educational advantage. Ninety percent of high-school English teachers said it was important for both college-bound and "regular" students to be biblically literate. An Illinois teacher stated, "I think from the standpoint of academic success, it is imperative that college-bound students be literate. For the others, I think it's important for them to understand their own culture, just to be well-grounded citizens of the United States-to know where the institutions and ideas come from."  
1 http://www.bibleliteracy.org/Secure/Documents/BibleLiteracyReport2005.pdf

Conversely, many teachers reported that students in their English classes who were familiar with the Bible were disadvantaged. One California teacher said: "Students who don't know the Bible are certainly at a disadvantage…. it takes more time for them to understand what it is." Teachers reported students without Bible knowledge take more time to teach, appearing "confused," "stumped," "clueless."

These English teachers reported that among their students, Bible illiteracy is common. The majority of high-school English teachers surveyed estimated that fewer than a fourth of their current students were Bible literate. Only 4 of the 30 public schools in the study (compared to all four private schools) offered a unit or course about the Bible. Economically advantaged school districts in this sample were far more likely to offer academic study of the Bible than less advantaged districts.

In the Appendix, there are a number of the Biblical terms that high school English teachers believe students need to know. Many of these terms appear in the Advanced Placement examination for English Composition.
In a second report – Bible Literacy Report II – “What University Professors Say Incoming Students Need to Know,” thirty-eight of thirty-nine English professors from 34 leading universities, including Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley agreed “Regardless of a person’s faith, an educated person needs to know about the Bible. Additionally, several of the English professors provided additional comments: "

Absolutely. [Without the Bible] it's like using a dictionary with one-third of the words removed." Dr. George P. Landow, Brown University 
"True. You're simply ignorant of yourself if you don't know the Bible." Dr. Ina Lipkowitz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"Definitely. Agree." Dr. Robert Kiely, Harvard University
"Not to have that is almost crippling in students' ability to be sophisticated readers." Dr. Ulrich Knoefplmacher, Princeton University
"Incontestable statement." Dr. Ralph Williams, University of Michigan
"Absolutely necessary. [Bible allusions are] more concentrated and more specifIc and profound and revisited over and over again; more necessary than classics." Dr. Stuart K. Culver, University of Utah
"Yes. A no-brainer." Dr. Gordon M. Braden, University of Virginia"
Every educated person deserves to know the Bible." Dr. Leland Ryken, Wheaton College, IL
2 http://www.religiousfreedomcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/BibleLiteracyReport2006.pdf

Overwhelmingly, professors in this survey indicated that a lack of basic Bible literacy hampers students' ability to understand both classics and contemporary work. Arduously "decoding.” In response to the question “ If students don’t know about the Bible, what kinds of things are difficult? Examples? Professors identified many themes including:
  1. Miss allusions and references as well as symbols and themes. 
  2. Inability to think with the metaphor 
  3. Miss “texture” or “richness” of the text. Nuances are lost. 
  4. Find it difficult to piece together an overall set of patterns or themes in the literature.  
  5. Much harder to teach literature when no one in a class of extremely bright, generally hard-working students can identify a Hebrew prophet. 
  6. Don’t have access to so much meaning, not only in text but also in art and music. 
  7. Professor must work harder: “You’ve got to stop and explain”; or teach the reference in office hours. 
  8. Unable tog et at the essential: the way an author takes a tradition and molds it and changes it. 
  9. Secular writers who are writing out of a religious tradition or voice might as well be writing in a foreign language. 
  10. No way to respond to literature in English. 
  11. Learning Old English as a language is very difficult.   
Interestingly enough, some universities, such as Yale, believe the Bible is so critical to the English major that they require the study of the Bible, if the student is not familiar with it, as part of the English major.

The report lists 72 writers who wrote literature where Bible literacy is advantageous to understanding what these writers are saying.

This report concludes that high schools should make basic Bible knowledge part of their curriculum, especially for college preparatory students. Doing so requires developing a variety of educational materials and curricula that simultaneously (a) acknowledge the Bible's status as sacred scripture to millions of Americans, (b) are fair to students of all faith traditions, and (c) are of high academic quality.

Doing so will be an important part of meeting the next generation's educational needs in an increasingly diverse population.
What students know about the Bible  

The first research report reports that The George Gallup Organization did a nationally representative sample of 1,002 teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18, who were interviewed between May 20 and June 27, 2004. It represents the first extensive, nationally representative survey of the Bible and religious knowledge among American teens in recent years.

The good news is that strong majorities of American teens recognize the basic meaning of widely used Judeo-Christian terms such as "Easter," "Adam and Eve," "Moses," "The Golden Rule," and "The Good Samaritan." However, substantial minorities lack even the most basic working knowledge of the Bible. Almost one out of ten teens believes that Moses is one of the twelve Apostles. About the same proportion, when asked what Easter commemorates, or to identify Adam and Eve, respond "don't know."

However, only a minority of American teens appear to be "Bible literate," reaching the level of knowledge similar to that deemed by high school English teachers as necessary to a good education.
  • Fewer than half of teens (49 percent) knew what happened at the wedding at Cana ( Jesus turned water into wine). Nearly one out of four refused even to guess. 
  • Given a choice of four quotations from the Bible, almost two-thirds of teens could not correctly identify a quotation from the Sermon on the Mount.  
  • Similarly, fewer than a third of teens could correctly identify which statement about David was true. (David tried to kill King Saul.) One-quarter of teens believed that the statement "David was king of the Jews" was false. 
  • Only 8 percent of teens in public schools in this sample reported that their school offered an elective course on the Bible, and just one out of four public-school students (26 percent) said that a unit or section on the Bible was offered in an English or social-studies class.   
Our analysis of the Gallup data in Bible Literacy Report concluded, "No controversy among adults, however heated, should be considered an excuse for leaving the next generation ignorant about a body of knowledge crucial to understanding American art, literature, history, language, and culture."

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