Mom, Dad, we got our new Bibles in school today, and boy, are they neat!
Johnny showed me the story about Onan, and I can’t wait to spill my seed on the ground, which I might want to do while reading Song of Solomon, if I could make out all the big words.
Johnny had just gotten going on the good parts when all of a sudden JimTom started yelling about how they had got the wrong kind of Bible. He said the right kind was the New American Standard version, not the old King James thing. Then Jenny piped up and said the right one was the Christian Standard version, and Robert wanted to know what was wrong the New King James one. Mary Lou said the New Living Tradition was best, but Liz slapped her and said that The Good News translation was a whole bunch better than that.
Miss Krotchet sent Liz to the office and told everybody to quiet down, but by then Emma and Ralph were arguing about the Contemporary English version and the English Standard version. Sam said, “Well, English is English, ain’t it?” Everybody got to laughing, and most of them sat down at their desks.
Then, all of a sudden, Pedro, Abdul and Hermann the German stood up and asked why nobody cared about the New International Version, and everything started up again.
Oh, and I flunked the spelling test.
In all seriousness (sort of)
But enough. What hath Ryan Walters wrought with his continued call for mandating Bibles in Oklahoma classrooms? A distraction from the teaching of reading, writing and arithmetic, that’s what.
Oh, but the Bible mandate will enhance student understanding of history, won’t it? Well, I confess to having certain prejudices in that regard. I taught history for more years than Mr. Walters has been alive, and I saw no evidence that any religion had any impact on students’ knowledge, or rather their lack of knowledge, especially concerning the history of Oklahoma.
Two examples come to mind. Most of my students knew Oklahoma was full of Native Americans, but they often had no idea why. It was news to them that Oklahoma had begun its history as a death camp designed for tribes in the southeastern United States, as per President Andrew Jackson’s request for Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act of 1830.
Every removed tribe endured a “trail of tears,” and the details are frequently mind-numbing.
“Indian removal was awful,” one student told me. “How come I never heard of it?”
Add the Bible to the discussion, and you could get around to lecturing about the Lost Tribes of Israel — which would probably be the least of it.
And then there’s the lesson about all the Black entrepreneurs showing up in Indian Territory after the Civil War. All that Black prosperity led in a few decades to what was once the Tulsa Race Riot but is now known as the Tulsa Race Massacre. Just desserts for usury in the temple, biblically speaking, eh wot?
The Walters Bible mandate opens an enormous can of worms, which may well play out in court. Of course, it may not play out in the fictional classroom above because Walters has now informed us that he has a preferred translation: the New King James version.
Even more, his request for proposal seeks leather-bound Bibles containing the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Pledge of Allegiance. What version fits those parameters? Why, that would be Lee Greenwood’s God Bless The U.S.A. Bible, which has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump and is sometimes called the “Trump Bible.” One can only wonder if they have worked something out.
As his behavior would suggest, Mr. Walters is not a scholar, but Alan Levenson is. He holds the University of Oklahoma’s Schusterman/Josey Chair in Judaic history, and I encourage all interested parties to read his recent letter to the editor of The Norman Transcript.
“Ryan Walters doesn’t want too many notes and neither did King James,” Levenson quips.
Of course, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s intellect.
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