The Texas Freedom Network's report on the bible curriculum in some 300+ U.S. school districts has now been made available online.
Below is the context summary from Religious Right Watch
As reported in The New York Times today by Ralph Blumenthal and Barabara Novovitch, "the school board in Odessa, the West Texas oil town, voted unanimously in April to add an elective Bible study course to the 2006 high school curriculum."
There's an obvious and menacing problem: the so-called class is not an academic introduction to the Bible--it's a disingenuously crafted Bible advocacy experience. Specifically, it is conservative evangelical propoganda. It's no more an academic "class" than a Masonic rite.
The teaching plan for the bible study--currently "used by more than 175,000 students in 312 school districts in 37 states"--was crafted by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, which does not "disclose the schools using its course," and offers only "a summary of the course...on the Internet, and printed copies cost $150."
The bible study is rife with dubious statements. "In one teaching unit, students are told, 'Throughout most of the last 2,000 years, the majority of men living in the Western world have accepted the statements of the Scriptures as genuine.' The words are taken from the Web site of Grant R. Jeffrey Ministries' Prophecy on Line."
Also,
Mark A. Chancey, professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas...said he found the bible study 'riddled with errors' of facts, dates, definitions and incorrect spellings. It cites supposed NASA findings to suggest that the earth stopped twice in its orbit, in support of the literal truth of the biblical text that the sun stood still in Joshua and II Kings.
'When the type of urban legend that normally circulates by e-mail ends up in a textbook, that's a problem,' Mr. Chancey said.
Tracey Kiesling, the national council's national teacher trainer, said the course offered 'scientific documentation' on the flood and cites as a scientific authority Carl Baugh, described by Mrs. Kiesling as 'an internationally known creation scientist who founded the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, Tex.'
What is more, "A highly critical article in The Journal of Law and Education in 2003 said the course 'suffers from a number of constitutional infirmities' and 'fails to present the Bible in the objective manner required.'"