Oklahoma’s state superintendent on Thursday directed all public schools to teach the Bible, including the Ten Commandments, in the latest conservative push testing the boundaries between religious instruction and public education.
The superintendent, Ryan Walters, who is a Republican, described the Bible as an “indispensable historical and cultural touchstone” and said it must be taught in certain grade levels.
The move comes a week after Louisiana became the first state to mandate that public schools display the Ten Commandments in every classroom, which was quickly challenged in court. The Oklahoma directive could also be challenged and is likely to provoke the latest tangle over the role of religion in public schools, an issue that has increasingly taken on national prominence.
Sure is a lot of church and state mixing together here.
Yes and no. In world history you typically learn about the rise of different religions and their affect on the world. Knowing the 10 commandments could help teach this for its historical significance. At the same time teaching children the 10 commandments to indoctrinate them to a certain religion is definitely illegal. It’s a hard thing to prove/disprove. A good teacher would teach the 10 commandments and similar beliefs in other major religions. Teachers are wildly underpaid and under supported in the the USA so “good teachers” are sometimes difficult to find.
This will fall on deaf ears, but Oklahoma (and the rest of the south) needs to start voting these clowns out of office and onto the street.
The majority of the southern states identity (not that part) has long since been reduced to a caricature of itself.
All being a southerner requires now is access to your divine guide: whatever the most recent pop country album is. It’s just advertisement set to country tunes.
If anything I’d say the least free group in America is your typical ‘country boy.’
I know a shit ton of people in southern states and not a got dang one of them likes country. Or Western!
(now there is some overlap in the rockabilly and singer-songwriter types, and Nashville is where a ton of musician hotshots live, but straight top 40 radio Barf Grits country - nah.)
Yeah, it’s more a commentary on the whole current ‘country’ lifestyle. Texan? Buy all the things with a single star on it or you aren’t Texas enough. Southern? Get that truck. Gotta lift it. Biggest tires you can find. It’s all just the most degenerate capitalism with a dixie wrapper on it.
I just don’t see how this is so blatantly done. It should be a slam dunk in court. Churches don’t pay taxes. Public schools are funded with taxes. Churches don’t get to make the rules for public schools.
Let’s flip it on it’s head. I don’t tithe to churches, but now all churches must serve pepperoni Eucharist and orange soda at service. Done. That’s the rule, now, since it seems like anyone can just say some shit and it has to happen. Don’t push me, or I’ll make you fill the baptismal with lime jell-o.
They’re banking on, and rightfully so, all of these shitty conservative judges that McConnell put in place to rule in their favor.
Next month:
This court finds that, without any question of interpretation, church and state, including publicly-funded education institutions, must be separated. We also find that, with the evidence considered, the teaching of the Bible does not violate the separation of church and state. Teaching of religious texts may, for educational purposes, be added to school curriculum when said curriculum does not mandate teachings containing subjects contrary to the interests of national security and economic prosperity.
Cue 382 additional lawsuits regarding every other religion that has ever existed getting their own representation. I’m going to need a full semester class on Zoroastrianism.
I just don’t see how this is so blatantly done. It should be a slam dunk in court.
The fact that they’re doing this openly should be a warning sign of where this country is currently, and is heading. They’re doing this because they know the SC is compromised in their favor. All they have to do to get away with it is promise 5-6 judges a small gratuity.
I’m not Catholic, but can’t you just make regular jello, and then have the priest bless it?
I’d happily teach the bible, and I’d reap such a crop of athiests that they’d beg me to stop.
“But this country was founded on christofascism!”
- His constituents
