Texas Education Board to Vote on Bible-Infused Lessons in Public Schools

A new curriculum would focus on Christianity more than other religions. A kindergarten lesson on the Golden Rule, for example, would teach about Jesus and his Sermon on the Mount.

Texas education officials are expected to vote on Monday on whether to approve a new elementary-school curriculum that infuses teachings on the Bible into reading and language arts lessons.

The optional curriculum, one of most sweeping efforts in recent years to bring a Christian perspective to more students, would test the limits of religious instruction in public education.

It could also become a model for other states and for the administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has promised to champion the conservative Christian movement in his second presidential term.

In the ascendant but highly contested push to expand the role of religion in public life, Texas has emerged as a leader. It was the first state to allow public schools to hire religious chaplains as school counselors, and the Republican-controlled legislature is expected to renew its attempts to require public-school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments.

The new curriculum, which covers kindergarten through fifth grade, would be optional, although school districts would receive a financial incentive to adopt it. The Texas State Board of Education sets standards for what students must be taught and approves a selection of curriculums, and individual schools and school districts choose which ones they will teach.

Texas has about 2.3 million public-school students in kindergarten through fifth grade who could be taught the new curriculum.

Religion makes up a relatively small portion of the overall content. But the lessons delve into Christianity far more often and in depth than they do into other faiths, religious scholars say and a review of the materials by The New York Times found.

In kindergarten, for example, children would be taught that many religions value the Golden Rule, but the lessons would be focused on the Christian version, and introduce students to Jesus and his Sermon on the Mount.

In a fifth-grade lesson on Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” students would be taught an account of the final meal shared by Jesus and his 12 disciples, and would read several verses from the Gospel of Matthew.

The Bible has often appeared in American schools throughout the nation’s history, and schools are free to teach from religious texts. Even so, the proposed curriculum has ignited an uproar, with parents and teachers — including some Christian Texans — expressing worry that the lessons blur the line between instruction and evangelizing, and present scripture and tenets of the Christian faith as factual truths to young children.

Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, and other supporters of the new program say that the Bible is a fundamental text in American history, and argue that students’ knowledge of the world would be incomplete without a classical education and robust understanding of Bible stories.

The Texas Education Agency, which oversees public education in the state, released the new curriculum in the spring after the state enacted a law directing the agency to develop its own free textbooks. The law was aimed at providing high-quality teaching materials to educators who often spend long hours searching for them, lawmakers said.

The move provoked immediate controversy. A top curriculum publisher took issue with a state request to add more biblical content to its materials, the education news outlet The 74 reported.

When a panel was convened to vet the new curriculum for bias, opponents argued that the state included several people on the panel who were known for religious advocacy, including Ben Carson, the former federal housing secretary, to rubber-stamp the lessons.

“They’re using Texas as a testing ground for these extreme ideas,” said State Representative James Talarico, a Christian and a Democrat who is also a student at a Presbyterian seminary in Austin.

Similar clashes are erupting in other states, like Oklahoma and Louisiana, where conservative Christian leaders have taken steps to expand the role of religion in public schools. Proponents say Christian themes are pervasive in American culture and that exposing students to them is crucial to their academic development.

“Our language is redolent with concepts, phrases and allusions drawn directly from the Bible and other touchstones of Western thought and culture,” Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in a recent column.

“Without complete command of these references, students — particularly poor, minority and immigrant students — will struggle to fully comprehend what they read,” Mr. Pondiscio, a former teacher, wrote.

The new curriculum has provoked the anger of Texans of other faiths, who say the lessons lack balance and in some places are even offensive.

Some Jewish families were outraged, for example, over an activity included in a second-grade lesson on the Old Testament story of Esther. In the biblical account, a high-ranking official in the Persian Empire cast lots to decide when all Jews in the land would be killed, and Esther stopped the planned attack.

The lesson included a game in which teachers would ask students to choose a number and then roll a die to see if their number was called.

“This is shocking, offensive and just plain wrong,” Sharyn Vane, a Jewish parent of two Texas public school graduates, said at a public hearing on the curriculum in September, where the majority of speakers criticized the potential lessons.

“Do we ask elementary students to pretend to be Hitler?” Ms. Vane asked, calling the curriculum “wildly problematic in its depictions of Jews.”

The curriculum developers removed the dice rolling game and made other changes after the hearing.

Thomas K. Lindsay, the higher education policy director at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative group, said that he was “frustrated and very saddened” that critics of the curriculum were focused on its religious content. He argued that the lessons do not proselytize to children.

The Texas Education Agency has said that the proposed curriculum was developed using cognitive science research to improve student outcomes, and Mr. Lindsay said that critics were ignoring its potential to help close reading gaps for children who are behind.

“I understand we’re a polarized country,” said Mr. Lindsay, a member of the state’s curriculum advisory board. “But we’ve got a chance to do something good for the kids who need it most.”

Some critics of the new curriculum say that besides a lack of balance, some of its lessons simply are not very good.

Mark A. Chancey, a professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University near Dallas, said that the material includes apparent errors. He said the lessons were also often “not age appropriate,” he added, noting that a lesson that describes Genesis to kindergartners could lead them to believe it was fact that God created the world in six days.

David R. Brockman, a Christian theologian and religious studies scholar who reviewed the curriculum, said he has “long been an advocate of teaching about religion in public schools.” But lessons must be balanced, accurate and not promote one religion over others, he said.

The Texas curriculum, he said, does not clear the bar.

In a fifth-grade unit on racial justice, students would be taught that Abraham Lincoln and abolitionists relied in part “on a deep Christian faith” to “guide their certainty of the injustice of slavery.” But they would not be taught that other Christians leaned on the same religion to defend slavery and segregation.

It was one example, Mr. Brockman said, of what he called a “whitewashing of the negative details of Christian history” that “helps to promote Christianity as an inherently ‘good' religion.”