Monday, August 01, 2005

Coping with Blog Depression (via Eric Muller/Lance McCord). 9:13:47 AM   permalink   comment []

NYT covers Texas controversy over use of material from Greensboro-based National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools. NYT: "The council calls its course a nonsectarian historical and literary survey class within constitutional guidelines requiring the separation of church and state." It didn't look that way to me, or to Sally Greene. The close association with the American Family Association is a red flag. So is the dissing of other religions. This is not an easy subject to get right, but the NCBPS doesn't really seem to be trying very hard. From my previous post: They publish very little about the actual curriculum, and don't include much info on the books and videos they sell at what they themselves label a "ministry"-- just short blurbs like this one for a video "demonstrating that the current 'seperation of church and state' is something never intended by the Founding Fathers." They are closely associated with the American Family Association, a hard-line power in the culture war, and encourage you to "visit and support" other sites "supportive of our cause," including links to creationist sites. They are prone to ahistorical statements, such as this one: "The Bible was the foundation and blueprint for our Constitution, Declaration of Independence, educational system, and our entire history until the last 20 to 30 years." They offer themselves in explicit contrast to "politically correct world religions courses" which "tend to promote faiths such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism" and don't teach "a true Bible curriculum." UPDATE: Sally Greene provides a link to the Chancey report mentioned in the NYT article. Summary: " The problems detailed by this report -- a blatant sectarian bias, distortions of history and science, numerous factual errors, poor sourcing -- reveal a curriculum that is clearly inappropriate for the 1,000 public schools the NCBCPS claims use its materials. Indeed, such schools would do far better by considering other Bible literacy curricula for what could be an enriching part of their students' learning experience." 9:11:51 AM   permalink   comment []