Last month, in November 2024, Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) narrowly approved an optional curriculum that would allow stories from the Bible to be taught to K-5 elementary school children. Even though three Republicans joined the board’s four Democratic members to reject the course of study, the SBOE accepted the Bluebonnet reading curriculum in an 8-7 vote.

According to a May 2024 Texas Education Agency (TEA) press release, the reading lessons use a classical education model and include not only Bible-infused courses, but also teach students about art, history, culture, science, and technology. School districts who decide to use the material will receive up to $60 per student as an incentive to adopt the proposal. The curriculum is part of the state’s Bluebonnet resource, an optional tool to use free of charge, and the proposal was one of dozens that the state board reviewed to consider adding to its approved list.

The Bluebonnet curriculum’s approval revives an age-old discussion about the constitutionality of including religious teachings in the public school system. Historically, the primary method of determining the program’s constitutionality is by testing whether the program violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment that states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

The language in the Establishment Clause reflects the idea that public schools cannot impose a religion on students and cannot prevent individuals from expressing their own religious beliefs within the public school system. This is a fine distinction to make because what one person sees as a right to free expression, another might perceive as an imposition of religious beliefs.

In 2009, in the Croft vs. Perry case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld a Texas law mandating a moment of silence in the daily school schedule. David and Shannon Croft, parents of three minor children, sued the governor of Texas, arguing that Texas Education Code 25.082 violated the Constitution. The 5th Circuit rejected that claim, determining instead that the state legislature had sufficiently articulated secular ways for the students to use that minute “as the student chooses, reflect, pray, meditate or engage in any other silent activity that is not likely to interfere or distract another student.”

The court of appeals’ rationale for upholding the “moment of silence” creates a misleading impression that for every perceived religious inclusion in the school system, there must be an equally weighty secular way to use that time. This is simply not the case, and the new curriculum reflects the reality that the Bible can be taught in public schools if it is taught in an academic way and not to inculcate students into the Christian belief system.

This distinction was first recognized by the courts in 1963, in Abington School District vs. Schempp, when the Supreme Court decided that teaching about religion is constitutionally permissible and educationally appropriate. The justices went even further to say that knowledge about religion’s place within civilization constitutes an important element of a well-rounded education:

In addition, it might well be said that one’s education is not complete without a study of comparative religion or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization. It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historical qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.

Texas will be one of a handful of states to include the Bible as part of its K-12 curriculum. Eight states -- Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas -- require that a Bible course be offered as an elective in the public schools. Still, Texas is the first state to include Bible teachings as part of its reading curriculum, and it will need to use this curriculum in a way consistent with the First Amendment.

The instruction cannot, for example, include prayers, chants, or faith-based Bible study. This was a lesson that the California Department of Education (DoE) learned in 2022 when they agreed to remove instructional materials that included two chants, one to an Aztec god, Tezkalipoka, once honored with human sacrifice, and another to a Yoruba deity called Ashe. The Thomas More society successfully sued the California DoE to have that curriculum removed because of its unconstitutionality. The chanting was recognized as a violation of the rights of students to attend public school without one religion being promoted over another.

Currently, one aspect of the Bluebonnet curriculum that helps to align it with the Establishment Clause is that the proposed courses are not compulsory. If a school district (ISD) does not want the headache, that ISD will choose one of many other available curricula. As an optional course of study, the state of Texas has also avoided being at loggerheads with that part of the Establishment Clause that prohibits public schools from promoting one religion over another.

The second part of the curriculum’s constitutionality depends in large part on how these reading courses are taught. The content-area teachers cannot be antagonistic towards the viewpoints of the non-religious. Judging the instructor’s impartiality will be difficult, especially in the context of elementary school learning. The teacher will need to teach the material as part history, part literature course, not an impossible feat, but one that requires training. To be constitutional, the Blue Bonnet curriculum cannot inhibit the student’s free speech or impose Christianity on students of other faiths.

In terms of the constitutionality of the $60 student incentive, in a May 2024 report, Texas Education Agency reported that the average state expenditure per student in Texas was $13,124 in the 2023 fiscal year. The $60 increase represents a relatively small .5% increase in that amount. Considering the challenges of teaching the curriculum in a constitutional way, that $60 will likely be used for training those teachers willing to pilot the program. The K-5 courses must improve elementary school students’ reading abilities and, to a lesser extent, expose students to the history and culture that played a central role in the making of the Western world. The $60 incentive will likely need to be applied to training these teachers to make sure they instruct with the curriculum’s constitutionality in mind.

Image: Wohnai