About the Editor.
After I heard about the mandatory directive to incorporate the Christian Holy Bible into classroom education in Oklahoma, I read the Instructional Support Guidelines for Teachers that was circulated by the Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction. I thought to myself , wow — this would really take teachers a long time to do this all by themselves. This is really a lot to ask of very busy folks that are already doing an incredibly important (though often thankless job) for very meager compensation. The King James version of the Bible is 783,137 words long. That’s about seventy hours of reading just to go through it one time not to mention creating activities and lessons built around the OSDE guidance for literature, art, history, music, social studies, and other teachers.
So, here I sat with a theology degree… having read the Bible a time or twenty, studied the original languages, studied exegesis from many different approaches, and various hermeneutics as well as history of the Christian religion, and other relevant subjects… and I decided I needed to try to help teachers who might be in search of lesson ideas and activities for students that comply with the OSDE guidance. I am not a teacher (that is obvious by the general types of “lessons” and “activities” that are woefully devoid of the magic that I remember my teachers bringing to subjects when I was growing up).
I am not a school administrator (and I have absolutely no idea how lessons or resources get to be approved for use by teachers). But I do want to help. Maybe if teachers can’t use these materials until they are approved by the appropriate curricular committees or what not maybe they could share the materials with the requisite gatekeepers. Or maybe they could share the materials with parents so parents could decide for themselves just how suitable the Bible is for classroom instruction in public schools.