Comment: KY passes Senate bill to teach Bible in public schools

A plan to give Kentucky students a well-rounded education, by ensuring familiarity with The Bible, generated a surprising amount of controversy. So much, in fact, that you might think that they were planning to indoctrinate students with a blind and uncritical devotion to atheistic Darwinism. (Schools never do that!) Here was my comment:

"Heinz M and others - you are absolutely right. Children should not be taught any books of literature, history, or philosophy! All such books should be barred from school. What good is Shakespeare? Just a bunch of nonsense written by an imperfect man. Or, if they read any books at all (other than math or science books), they should NOT be 1) widely-read, 2) cited by large numbers of influential thinkers or historic leaders, or 3) significant to the development of Western civilization. It would be very dangerous if our students were exposed to such works!"

One commenter claimed that if students studied the Bible, then they must also study all of the pseudo-canonical books and alternative (Gnostic) gospels from the first few centuries, and gave a list of almost 100 books. But we don't study these books for the same reason that we do study Shakespeare and Twain instead of paperback romance novels: over time, certain works are recognized as classics of enduring value, while others are abandoned due to historical innacuracy, poor quality, or sheer irrelevance. In every humanities class, teachers must decide which works - of music, art, literature, history, or philosophy - to present, and it only makes sense to use the limited time available to focus on those works of greatest significance.

That's what makes for a truly well-rounded education. (Assuming, of course, that our schools are meant to genuinely educate people, and not merely to supply labor for certain industries or votes for a particular party). What students choose to do with that knowledge - believe it or reject it, use it or forget it - is entirely up to them.