I had to read sections of the Bible as part of 9th grade English Lit. Part of the reason? Milton makes no sense if you don't know the Bible, and everybody agrees that Milton is part of English Lit.
Actually, a lot of Western Lit makes no sense if you don't know the Bible at all, so it's a good grounding to have. But it's a good grounding the way you read Herodotus and Virgil, not an all-encompassing guide to things that do not belong in English class.
(Despite that 9th grade larnin', I somehow made it to college under the vague impression that the crucifixion had taken place in Rome. That was before the History Channel though, which seems to have weekly specials about the archaeohistory of the Holy Land.)
We read Genesis in English class. To discuss it as literature.
We were also required by law to be taught creationism alongside evolution, but my biology teacher scoffed at that law. And then left teaching to enter a seminary.
If there is a chunk of kids who want to learn about the Bible in a literature context
I think it's okay in a literature context, but it sounds like the Texas program crosses over into endorsement.
In middle school in one world history class we learned about Islam. We studied it for quite a while, I remember trying to memorize the five pillars of Islam.
It wasn't being taught as a religon though, not with the idea of conversion and saying this is the only way. We were studying it as part of history and culture so we could better understand the time period and the people.
Mom's still pissed about this, but I never had a problem with it.
What I did have a problem with was in high school being made to feel guilty because I didn't participate in some morning prayer around the flag pole. The prayer thing wasn't required by school, but the kids who were doing it tried to make the rest of us feel guilty.
They didn't see the difference between the class reading a book that had some elements of paganism in it and teaching paganism as the One True Path.
Quite a while ago I was in a bookstore, checking out the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section and there were a group of people there looking at a JRR Tolkein book and commented on what a sick twisted mind could produce all this anti-christian stuff.
What I did have a problem with was in high school being made to feel guilty because I didn't participate in some morning prayer around the flag pole. The prayer thing wasn't required by school, but the kids who were doing it tried to make the rest of us feel guilty.
Wow, that's real? I am again reminded that I don't live in America.
We read Genesis in English class. To discuss it as literature.
I had some of this in a college English class. Very interestingly taught by an excellent professor. But there were a few awkward moments during the first class when he explained we were studying it as literature and not as the Word of God. A student excused herself because she said she took the bible literally word for word and couldn't accept that it was being taught otherwise.
Hell, I have an otherwise well-educated teen cousin who thought Adam and Eve were Jesus' parents. It's an odd sort of educational avoidance, that.
OMG, I was so confused about how dinosaurs and Adam and Eve (and maybe something stupid like the Pilgrims) fit together. Relatedly, it was an embarrassingly long time before I figured out how cells fit in with atoms.
