Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry recently signed a bill that mandates the display of the Ten Commandments in each public school classroom. Louisiana.gov
There’s only so much teaching kids that America's evil, all of America’s founders were racists, and kids should over-focus on skin color before there’s an equal and opposite reaction.
Americans know of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s many efforts against the woke agenda in public schools.
Enter Louisiana and Oklahoma. The moves in those states focus on the Bible.
The usual suspects–the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and those of their ilk–have their hair on fire over Christianity in public. There’s wailing and gnashing of teeth about a theocracy.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry recently signed several education bills, and one mandates displaying the Ten Commandments in each public school classroom. Meanwhile, Oklahoma Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters ordered Bible instruction in grades 5-12.
Both are itching for and getting legal showdowns. Newsweek’s Natalie Venegas reported Texas, Oklahoma, and Utah have had proposed bills similar to Louisiana.
Scott Walker, the president of the Young America’s Foundation and the former Wisconsin governor, wrote a column for the Washington Times in late December 2023. He noted a poll by the Daily Mail revealing that 1 in 5 Gen Zers aged 18-29 view former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden positively and his actions could be a “force for good.”
Walker wrote:
How could we have gotten to this point? Students are not being taught American history and basic civics.
Of middle school students tested, only 13% scored proficient in history, and only 22% were proficient in civics on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Regarding U.S. history, 40% of the students scored below a basic level of knowledge — a decline of 34% since 2018.
College student Anthony Jones wrote an opinion for USA Today in September 2020.
Jones wrote:
Among members of my generation, the youngest surveyed, patriots are in the minority. Only 4 out of 10 respondents ages 18-34 claim to be extremely or very proud of being American.
Landry and Walters see the Bible as a historical document and relevant for education.
Erik Ortiz of NBC News wrote:
‘If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses,’ Landry, a Republican, said in May.
Landry ‘sees this cultural struggle. He’s this culture warrior,” University of Louisiana political science professor Pearson Cross said. ‘He’s comfortable in this, and he believes that being attacked or having to defend on these particular issues is a good thing. It demonstrates his bona fides because he’s taking on the woke left.’
Oklahoma Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters is mandating Bible instruction for U.S. history. Oklahoma.gov
Walters said any teacher failing to teach the Bible curriculum could have their teacher’s license in jeopardy.
It’s one thing to teach historical aspects of the Bible as information. It’s a different thing for students to understand how the Ten Commandments reflect the nature of God, and how that relates to the historical aspects they will learn.
For example, three of the issues Oklahoma wants to focus on, include:
The mention of “the Creator” in the Declaration of Independence.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s biblical references in his speeches and writing, specifically his Letter from Birmingham Jail.
The Mayflower Compact.
The Bible spans 4,000 to 6,000 years of history. Archeologists in Israel find items all the time that confirm Scripture, like here. The Bible also is an intensely spiritual book, exposing human nature. It’s hard to imagine any Oklahoma teacher, unless they are active in a church, feeling able to discuss spiritual applications from history. The Bible has many genres of literature, with history being one of many.
Meanwhile, the Ten Commandments shape American civil and criminal laws (don’t steal, kill, lie or commit adultery). The bigger issue is the morality and ethics behind those laws and how they originated.
Yet, it will take more than placing the Ten Commandments in Louisiana public schools to alter the course of some of the challenges occurring with Gen Z. The Annie E. Casey Foundation recently released its 2024 Kids Count Data Book. It paints a bleak picture on where things stand for education and the well-being of students outside school. Jonathan Haidt has chronicled the mental health crisis with female teens and young adults and even males. He has written several columns and has written a new book: The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.
Let’s see how judges view these responses in Louisiana and Oklahoma to teaching American history. Those decisions could determine how other states respond to the academic challenge that Walker noted.
Of the Ten Commandments, some are focused on others, while the first ones focus on God.
Richard Land, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, wrote a column for the Christian Post focused on Louisiana’s plan. Land observed:
Of course, as Dr. Phil McGraw pointed out in his new book, We’ve Got Issues. How You Can Stand Strong for America’s Soul and Sanity, too many Americans have forgotten or ignored the first Commandment and the results have been catastrophic.
That Commandment reads: “You shall have no other gods before Me.”
That will be ground zero for the lawsuits. These groups loathe any whiff of Christianity in public. Efforts to use the Bible to improve learning of U.S. history only gave them another bone to chew.
