By Melinda Buchanan | Published Thursday, October 1, 2009
Regarding Brandon Evans' commentary on the Bible in the classroom: as a Texas high school English teacher, I applaud the move, though I deplore the lack of funding or guidelines for training. It isn't about religion - it's about understanding the literature and Western Civilization.
I challenge you to teach any of the following literature without students having a knowledge of biblical stories (and the list is far from complete) - "Dante's Inferno," "Paradise Lost," "Moby Dick," "Billy Bud," "Grapes of Wrath," "Chaucer's Canterbury Tales," Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man," "Cry the Beloved Country" and all works of Shakespeare.
We thoroughly ground students in Greek mythology, and those works, too, are religious texts.
As soon as my students need the background from the Koran, Ramayana, the African Mwindo, or the Dhamma, to understand the literature in our curriculum, I will push for our lower grades to put an emphasis on those works.
Until then, my students need the classical Greek myths to understand The Odyssey, and I hope I don't have to explain what Captain Beatty means when he refers to the old woman who burned to death in her house full of books as having lived in a "damned Tower of Babel."
