From Jonah to Job, the Bible belongs in public schools
You can’t really get Moby Dick (or Pinocchio) if you’ve never heard of Jonah and the Whale, writes Adam Kirsch in The Atlantic. You won’t understand why Harriet Tubman was called “Moses,” if you’re not familiar with the Exodus story. Bible stories belong in public school classrooms, he argues. Americans who don’t know about David and Goliath, Job, the parting of the Red Sea, the Sermon on the Mount and the Good Samaritan will not be prepared to understand America’s history or literature.
The new required-reading list in Texas has angered many liberals, who see it as “an attack on civil liberties and cultural diversity,” Kirsch writes. The state school board has framed the Bible stories as part of a “common literary canon,” not as religious instruction, but many are unpersuaded. A Dallas Morning News editorial called for including the Quran and the Bhagavad Gita, he writes.
“Saying that Americans have special reasons to study the Bible doesn’t imply that it’s more sacred than the scriptures of other faiths,” writes Kirsch. American students don’t study English because it’s better than other languages. It’s our language. And Western culture is our culture.
