Zealot Education

Oklahoma Superintendant of Education Ryan Walters said, “We have to cover history accurately,” and with that, the Bible has been mandated to be taught in all Oklahoma public schools. This follows Louisiana’s asinine law of requiring the Ten Commandments be posted in all public school classrooms.

Walters also said it would be “academic malpractice” not to teach the Bible in classrooms. No. What would be academic malpractice is teaching children fictional fundamentalist zealotry as historical fact.

How do you teach history “accurately” from a book that teaches the Earth is only 6,000 years old? How do you teach history from a book that says the human race began from a couple who had two sons. How do you teach history from a book that says a pair of every animal species traveled to the Middle East (including sloths) to take an ark cruise while the entire planet was flooded? How do you teach history from a book that says a woman ate a forbidden apple because a snake told her it was OK? How do you teach history from a book that claims a virgin gave birth? How do you teach history from a book that teaches about Zombie Jesus?

Even the Satanic Bible doesn’t contain this much bullshit (actually, the Church of Satan isn’t actually about the Devil).

Rachel Laser, the president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told The New York Times, “Public schools are not Sunday schools. Public schools may teach about religion, but they may not preach any religion.”

Walters disagrees, saying, “We’re not pushing a certain faith on anyone, but we’re accurately teaching history.” Oh, they’re not pushing a certain faith, are they? Are they mandating that all public schools teach the Torah, the Koran, or the Book of Satan? If they’re only teaching the Bible, then it sounds to me like they’re only pushing a certain faith…theirs.

Rabbi Michael J. Broyde, a law professor and the projects director at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University thinks teaching the Bible may be OK. He compares teaching the Bible to Shakespeare being taught which scares me that he’s a professor at a university.

He said parents can object to any number of lessons a school has as a right to teach. “Maybe you think Shakespeare is stupid,” he explained, “and objected to the lessons of Hamlet. “The school can say, ‘Well, then you can tell your children that you don’t accept the lessons of Hamlet. But that doesn’t mean you can avoid taking the Hamlet exam.'”

This rabbi/professor doesn’t understand the issue. Shakespeare is literature, not a history lesson. There is no law about separation of Shakespeare and State. If teachers explain that the Bible should be taken as fiction, how well do you think the white fundamentalist lawmakers who created this mandate would accept it? How would Christian parents in Oklahoma take it?

Oklahoma and Louisiana have chosen to be thoecracies. Mouth-breathing troglodyte lawmakers in other Yee-Haw states are making similar efforts. This is what the governments do all across the Middle East. This is what the Taliban does. Soon, half our nation will be living under Sharia Law, and maybe all of it if the fundamentalist cult-like Supreme Court has it way.

The Oklahoma superintendent said one more thing about this mandate. “We would not have the ability to go out and fight for something like this if President Trump wasn’t leading the charge.” He said he appreciates that Trump stacked the high court with “originalist” judges who he believes would rule in favor of teaching the Bible in public schools. It’s scary that he may be right.

Louisiana and Oklahoma rank amongst the bottom in education and reading levels in our nation, and probably even lower than Afghanistan. Maybe before you place the Ten Commandents and Bibles for children to read in public schools, you first teach the children to read.

Creative note: This cartoon was lettered in my apartment but drawn on a train. The blog was written on the train with great difficulty, not because the train was shaky but because I’m distractions. There are dogs on this train, and they are lovely. There are also children…non-stop talky crying screaming children.

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