Texas education leaders unveil Bible-infused elementary school curriculum

[RandySF]

Elementary school curriculum proposed this week would infuse new state reading and language arts lessons with teachings on the Bible, marking the latest push by Texas Republicans to put more Christianity in public schools.

The Texas Education Agency released the thousands of pages of educational materials this week. They have been made available for public viewing and feedback and, if approved by the State Board of Education in November, will be available for public schools to roll out in August of 2025. Districts will have the option of whether to use the materials, but will be incentivized to do so with up to $60 per student in additional funding.

TEA Commissioner Mike Morath said the materials are based on extensive cognitive science research and will help improve students’ reading and math scores. In 2019, less than half of students met grade-level standards for reading, and that percentage has declined since the pandemic, based on state standardized test scores.

The new materials have prompted criticism, though. The education news site The 74 first reported the redesign on Wednesday and included excerpts of lesson plans with biblical references. They also reported that a New York-based curriculum vendor, Amplify, opted out of bidding on a contract after the state sought to insert biblical materials, but not other religious texts, into the curriculum. The state education agency rejected those claims, saying multiple religions are included throughout the curriculum. Because of Texas' size, textbooks that are developed for its schools are often used in other states.


https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/30/texas-public-schools-religion-curriculum/

[Irish_Dem]

1. Does Texas have private NON Christian schools?

This is where I would send my children.

What about students of other faiths? They have to sit in and be bombarded with Christian propaganda.

[edisdead]

2. And that is part of the problem.

[NanaCat]

14. The major cities do

Outside of those areas, secular private schools are rare. Even in the cities, the secular private schools tend to be the most elite, and thus the most expensive.

[Irish_Dem]

18. My military parents would have balked at going to Texas.

They would refuse to send their children to protestant schools.
I guess they would have had to put their children into Catholic schools
which is expensive for large families.

[Irish_Dem]

3. They are lying about the research.

There is no advantage using religion to teach math and science.

[Irish_Dem]

4. There are a lot of military bases in Texas.

Does the US military want to send military kids to Christian schools?
Is that what the parents want?

Catholics, Jews, Muslims, etc. do not want to send their kids to public schools which are protestant bible schools.
My military Catholic parents would have had a fit.

[NanaCat]

13. Kids on military bases are lucky

I know for a fact that the bases in San Antonio and Fort Bliss in El Paso have on-base preK-12 schools with their own curricula that is routinely better than anything Texas will ever vomit up for primary and secondary education, so they're safe. Sheppard (sp?) in Wichita Falls only has an elementary school. After that, they're prey for the local yokel morons.

The rest have no schools of their own that I know of. Those poor children...

[Irish_Dem]

16. The military DOD schools I attended overseas were excellent.

When stationed overseas the military provides schooling for military kids.

Highly qualified teachers from all over the US were employed by the Department of Defense to
teach military kids stationed overseas with their parents.

These teachers were way above standard teachers. Excellent teachers.

And there was never any military or US propaganda indoctrination whatsoever.

[jmowreader]

15. Sadly, a lot of them do

When I was in Berlin (1986-92) with Army Intelligence, the community commander of one of the big bases in West Germany decided to find out how effective the homeschool dependents were learning, so he ordered all the families who were homeschooling to bring their children to the Department of Defense Dependent School on base to take the DODDS proficiency test for the grade they were supposed to be in. All of them failed. ALL of them. Not one kid passed. When he started asking questions he learned they were using a Bible-based curriculum - not something like Bob Jones University’s or Pensacola Christian College’s, which are actually decent courses, but some weird shit from a serious cult - that wasn’t teaching them anything but the Bible. So, the community commander shut down homeschooling in his area of responsibility. The mothers filed a religious discrimination complaint about him and got him forcibly retired.

This one’s better: Field Station Augsburg, which was one of the biggest units of its type, was unknowingly harboring a religious cult in its ranks. The six people in it one day got the idea that the Antichrist was going to appear on the beach near Pensacola, Fla., and they had to go fight him. Now please understand that if the Antichrist would have had the common courtesy to wait about three weeks to appear these guys could have gotten leave approved to go back to Corry Station and kick his ass in the name of Ralph Vandeman, the Father of Army Intelligence…but noooo, the worthless fuck had to show up when the unit was at its busiest. So they went AWOL, flew back on their passports, got caught and eventually all got thrown out of the Army. Needless to say, when I went to leadership school at Fort Devens and there were three FSA members in my clsss, the first thing I said to them was, “you know I’m gonna ask about the fucking religious cult you guys are running.” Auggie’s unit motto was Home of the Professionals, so naturally me being an asshole sometimes made a slight modification to their unit crest - now it reads Home of the Religious Cult. It looks better that way.

[Irish_Dem]

17. Good God.

I was in military schools in the 1960's, so it appears that things really changed in 20 years.
The DOD schools I attended were excellent. No hint of religion, politics or patriotic jingoism present whatsoever.

I am shocked that military wives would file suit against a base commander. Back in the day that would have ended their husbands' careers.

My father was career USAF and we pride ourselves on being a smart, educated, ahead of the curve branch of the service.
We knew we were different from the other branches. More focused on mission, quiet low key dignity, rather than strict military protocol and all the military bowing and scraping, showboating.

[Deuxcents]

5. Religious instruction should be in religious settings, like churches, synagogues, temples, etc.

Reading, writing, arithmetic should be in public schools. This is Taliban ideology they’re promoting

[Initech]

9. The GOP *IS* the Taliban now.

It's insane to think that they've morphed into the party that we once declared war against 20 years ago. Fuck them.

[keithbvadu2]

6. The pastors want to go where the preying is easy.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=pastors+using+bible+to+molest+children&form=ANNTH1&refig=a8558883fb884084a8fb42e508e180e8&pc=U531

[JCMach1]

7. Xtian Dominionists now dominate the Texas GOP

[NanaCat]

12. When did they not?

My Mum has been telling me all of the horror stories about the state since she first went down there on a free-lance job. Shocked her knickers off when the first thing people asked her wasn't, 'what do you do (for a living)?' or 'what do you enjoy?' but 'what torture cult center do you go to?'

Unlike me, Mum is a christian (High Church CofE, at that), but she was appalled that a complete stranger considered such a matter any of their business. The person who asked it hated her ever after for responding with, 'I don't see how that's any of your concern.' I'm absolutely certain she also turned on this ice-cold House of Windsor-worthy accent she used whenever she is not amused, and don't even try tosh like that again. I can attest to how the Windsor accent was when she was at her scariest and most forbidding. It was time to beat a hasty retreat, because what came in the wake of it would not be pleasant.

Gives me the shivers, still, just thinking about that accent she can slip into in a heartbeat.

[JCMach1]

19. The level is different now and they literally have

People giving speeches on spiritual warfare at their conference.

There used to be way more 'Bush' Republicans.

[Initech]

8. Hey MAGA, we don't want to live in a theocractic fascist society, OK? Fuck you!

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

10. ""You have a chairman," Kinsey said, "who will fight for these three-letter words: G-O-D, G-O-P and U-S-A."

[NanaCat]

11. I advise any Texans who don't belong to the torture cult

To pull their kids out of school now and start homeschooling them. The average liberal can never do a worse job of teaching their own kids than a babble-addled curriculum would.

This atheist pulled her kid from an abusive school system. Best thing I ever did for him, and it made him a far better person than if he'd stayed. Within six weeks of taking him out of that system, he became far less bratty and money grubbing. It was like I got my sweet and loving child back.

[AllaN01Bear]

20. here we go again , indoctrinating our kids . and no means no.