State Board of Education hears public comment on Bible-infused curriculum

Last week, the Texas State Board of Education held a public hearing where it heard nearly ten hours of comments on a new public school curriculum. The Texas Education Agency made the curriculum materials public in May, and since then, critics have claimed that the material's use of Bible stories is inappropriate.

The TSA, for its part, says that such stories are useful for historical and literary learning. The board has already begun amending the curriculum and will on its approval in November.

Austin American-Statesman education reporter Keri Heath has been tracking this story and she joined the Standard with more. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

Keri Heath: So there is an example in one of the fifth grade curriculums of Martin Luther King's letter from a Birmingham jail. But the lesson then goes on to talk in extensive detail about some of the Christian references that Dr. King used in his letter. And so last week, some of the people who testified talked about how it wasn't, in their opinion, a necessity to go on in such detail about some of the stories that Dr. King referenced.

There's another example that a lot of the testifiers mentioned last week about the drawing of lots and the story of Queen Esther in the Bible. Some of the folks who came to speak about the treatment of Jewish people in the Bible took a lot of issue with the way that the curriculum writers portrayed the story.

And, you know, their issue was really that a lot of these stories had multiple meanings and multiple interpretations and that this was a really difficult subject to infuse into the curriculum for young children.

What about proponents of this curriculum? What are they saying about the usefulness of Bible stories in the classroom?

There were some people who came last week to testify in favor of this curriculum. The curriculum was originally developed as part of a law passed in 2023 called House Bill 1605 . It was meant to try to give high quality instructional materials to teachers, especially new teachers. And so there was a lot of testimony about how this curriculum could help with that.

In terms of the Bible and Christian stories in particular, there was some testimony about how the founding of the nation, in the opinion of the testifiers, was founded on Christian and Biblical principles. And that these stories would help the students understand history in that context.

I understand that some of the folks who are speaking out against this new curriculum, though, are themselves Christians. Why are they against including Bible stories in public school lessons?

I talked to a few parents who came to testify last week, and many of them were Christians or people of faith, and they really felt like they wanted the chance to talk with their own children about faith in their own homes or in their places of worship. They felt like some of these stories did not portray their interpretations of the Bible or other religions.

And there were a lot of people from different faiths as well at the hearings last week. And they wanted the chance to talk with their children about faith in their own context.

Have people raised First Amendment religion clause considerations? And I wonder what that means for whether or not we'll actually see this in classrooms and when?

Absolutely. There have been issues raised. That's a really complex and fluid issue in public schools right now. There's been a lot of case law challenging this. So that will be an interesting challenge to work out.