FORCING THEIR HAND

In a brilliant stroke, the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Publis Schools has persuaded the school board of Odessa, TX to begin a new course on the Bible:

The council calls its course a nonsectarian historical and literary survey class within constitutional guidelines requiring the separation of church and state.

But a growing chorus of critics says the course, taught by local teachers trained by the council, conceals a religious agenda. The critics say it ignores evolution in favor of creationism and gives credence to dubious assertions that the Constitution is based on the Scriptures, and that "documented research through NASA" backs the biblical account of the sun standing still.

In the latest salvo, the Texas Freedom Network, an advocacy group for religious freedom, has called a news conference for Monday to release a study that finds the national council's course to be "an error-riddled Bible curriculum that attempts to persuade students and teachers to adopt views that are held primarily within conservative Protestant circles."

Very upset about it all is the oh so outraged and sophisticated looking Prof. David Newman (he's a genuine English teacher at Odessa College--smile for the camera!):

But in Odessa, where the school board has not decided on a curriculum, a parent said he found the course's syllabus unacceptably sectarian. He has been waging his own campaign for additional information on where it is being taught.

"Someone is being disingenuous; I'd like to know who," said the parent, David Newman, an associate professor of English at Odessa College who has made a page-by-page analysis of the 270-page syllabus and sent e-mail messages to nearly all 1,034 school districts in Texas.

Ah, disingenous. Not something the left that has sought to banish any mention of religion from public life in the name of "religious freedom" would know anything about.

Maybe if some of these kids actually had a class on the Bible they might have a vague clue what the majority of Western literature and art is about.