…or as Samuel L. Jackson so wisely observed:
The Texas State Board of Education has voted to make Bible passages required reading in public schools. The GOP dominated education board voted to pass a new required reading list on last week. Now required literature includes sections of the Book of Exodus for fifth graders, “The Shepherd’s Psalm” for seventh graders, and more. Naturally, Democrats, progressives and Muslims who want the U.S. to become an Islamic society like England and much of Europe are freaking out. And, also naturally, conservatives can’t keep their mouths sufficiently shut to give the law a chance when it gets to the Supreme Court, which it certainly will.
A Republican member of the Texas education board, Julie Pickren, told The Texas Tribune before the 9-5-1 vote that the readings will give students “important insight into the moral and philosophical traditions that have shaped Western civilization. When students engage directly with original writings, speeches, sermons, and foundational texts, they can evaluate ideas and develop a deeper understanding of the principles that have shaped the USA and Texas.”
Them’s fightin’ words to the Left. Board member Evelyn Brooks objected to the list, saying,
“Teachers need to have their autonomy. They’ve been selecting books for decades, for years. This is nothing new. This is not a new concept to teachers. We are simply giving them a mandated list, which I believe is unconstitutional, but regardless of what I believe, let’s not take their autonomy away.”
That isn’t a very persuasive argument either. Democrats and the teachers unions have turned the public schools into progressive indoctrination centers. Today’s teachers can’t be trusted to have “autonomy.” Mandated reading lists are not unconstitutional (Julie’s an ignoramus); even if the Bible section of the list gets struck down, we should take teacher autonomy away from the mountains to the prairie, to the oceans white with foam.
Ethics Alarms 
You earn the right to have autonomy through demonstrating produce. The modern education system fails to do so. Imagining what some of these teachers would assign for reading would basically make a further mockery of the education system.
Reading, riting, and rithemetic are the builing blocks of education, religion can be added to that withou ahrnot the individual. It was done when the NYC educational system was functional. We had what was then called release time. Each Wednesday we, the public school studnets were released to aattend relgious formation, The cahtolics went to st. ann’s, the jewish student went to beth shalom, the presbyterians went to the first presbyterian church. We had quakers who went to heir meeting house. Not many baptist or evangelicals inthe neighborhood at that time.
Thusday morning we all returned to Public school 120. No one attacked the other but each were grounded in the faith of thier choice. so when we recited the pledge of allegiance saying “one nation under God” we had a basis to underrstand.
Like it not, Christianity (and the ethical systems it wrought out over 1500 years) is inextricably tied to Western Civilization and the subset of Western Civilization that is the American Experiment.
There’s no understanding of how we got here or why we think our civilizational model is better without understanding some core principles that derive from “Athens”, from “Rome” and, gasp, from “Jerusalem”.
The Bible then, has useful and essential passages to read as part of the literary tradition called the “great conversation” that charts the internal dialogue of western civilization to the present day. It is therefore tied to our civilization and our educational goals of making good citizens in ways that the Koran, the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tripitaka, the Analects, the Guru Granth Sahib, the Tao Te Ching, the Avesta, et al, are not.