As most of you know, Samuel is attending a charter school through the public school system. When he first started attending this school several weeks ago, he was reading Charlotte's Web for his Literature class. But two weeks ago, he was assigned to read a story out of a book entitled Stories From the Bible. From where? Yes, the Bible. Two weeks ago he read the story of Ruth and Naomi. Interesting... Last week, he was assigned to read the story of David and Goliath. Even more interesting...
So, tonight I clicked on his curriculum list for the upcoming school week, and I saw that I had this message attached to the Literature lesson for the week:
Lesson Notes
A distinction needs to be made between, on one hand, teaching the Bible as a guide to belief, and, on the other hand, teaching stories from the Bible as literature. Teaching the Bible as a guide to belief is a religious task that belongs to the family (if the family so chooses) or the church. Teaching stories from the Bible as literature—which is the goal of these lessons—is an educational task intended to promote cultural literacy. As E. D. Hirsch, Jr. explains in
The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (2nd edition, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), “No one in the English-speaking world can be considered literate without a basic knowledge of the Bible.” Stories, characters, and expressions from the Bible are woven into the fabric of English, in everything from a sportscaster’s casual allusion to an uneven match as a “David and Goliath contest” to the poetry of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton.
Like I said, I find it very interesting how the school has worked this into the curriculum. Yet another reason that I am loving this new school.
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