This major policy change in education, Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters, requires for Bible as a part of middle and high school curriculum. It should be noted that such an approach serves as recognition of the religious context and significance of the Bible as the historical book of the culture.
Key Points:
- Directive Issued: Ryan Walters directed school districts across the state to use the Bible as a part of its in put to teaching, which he emphasized the citizenship’s role in framing history.
- Historical and Cultural Significance: God’s word is always historical and it becomes very spiritual when Walters expounded that to understand historical background of America and Western world the Bible is the most important asset.
- Effective Immediately: The policy concerns the learners in the grades 5–12 where the schools are mandated to use the Bible and the Ten Commandments as teaching reference materials.
- Legal and Educational Context: This directive comes after the implementation of the education standards in May 2019 in Oklahoma to raise the students’ cultural and historical consciousness.
- Pushback: From a letter sent to the school authorities by the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) which regards the directive as violation of church and state.
- Support and Criticism: While Walters believes that the picture promotes cultural and historical literacy critics view this as a clear violation of the constitution’s provisions on church-state separation.
- Implementation and Monitoring: According to the memorandum, it is mandatory to strictly follow this mandate, where guidelines on how the process of implementing and reporting the implementation of Section 504 for the school year 2024-2025 will be conducted is provided.
According to Walters, this effort will better inform students about the nation’s historical and cultural origins as it pertains to the foundation of its legal framework. Teacher’s intent to teach the Bible and the Ten Commandments is to provide another point of view on Western civilization and the values that informed the United States of America.