Oklahoma has recently found its way into the headlines by passing a controversial bill requiring public schools to teach the Bible in their curriculum. Since my wife and I homeschool our children, it may seem as though I have no dog in this fight. I am, however, an Oklahoman, meaning that my tax dollars go directly to the schools in question. Furthermore, the very nature of public education necessitates that citizens have a voice in how our fellow citizens are being educated. Indeed, it is for this reason that I do not grudge those in other states from weighing in on the matter as well. Donne was right to say that no man is an island, but neither are students, schools, and even entire school systems. What happens to one, to a greater or lesser degree, impacts us all.

To begin, allow me to establish the scope of this brief essay. I am solely addressing the principle of whether or not the Bible ought to be taught in public schools. And as the title has already revealed, my answer is unashamedly yes. The following words are my attempt to justify or, at least, explain that answer. Discussing how the Bible ought to be taught is a discussion for another time, since it would warrant a post (or more!) all to itself.

But as for the matter at hand: of course, the Bible should be taught in public schools. Yet that seems obvious to me because of my belief in what education is meant to be. Others may certainly arrive at a different stance because they have a different idea of what education is or ought to be. I believe our conversations regarding education would be much more fruitful if we attempted to begin with the foundational questions of “what is education?” and “what is its purpose and goal?” As it stands, our arguments over curricula and methodologies are like two builders, each holding entirely different blueprints, arguing over the dimensions and placement of the kitchen. Discovering that their blueprints differed would be the necessary first step to resolving their conflict. Moreover, so long as they remain oblivious to the difference, their agreement on what the cabinets should look like means very little.

Here then is the nutshell of my blueprint. If yours differs, perhaps we will at least be nearer the heart of our disagreement. I believe that education ought to be and, in many ways, irrevocably is enculturation, that is, it is the process of growing into a cultural ideal. As Chesterton wonderful said, “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” The Greeks called this paideia, and it shares its root with the word for child paidion. This is because children require a specific and targeted period of education, which we call schooling. The actual process of education, however, never comes to an end. We are never able to reach full maturity nor entirely educated. There is always more to learn and deeper roots to grow. No school can produce such a student by the age of eighteen, nor will adding four or five additional years in a university do the trick. Instead, the purpose of schooling (K-12, at least) ought to be to learn how to learn, to receive the necessary tools for properly belonging and contributing to one’s community and culture. Indeed, the culture shock that we experience when living in a culture that is new to us is a sign that education is fundamentally enculturation, for we find adjusting to new cultures shocking because a new process of education is being required of us.

Again, this is what I believe education both is and ought to be. I say that it is what education is in the sense that every form of schooling (yes, even unschooling) does the work of education. Thus, the “uneducated” man who says that the streets were his school is expressing a plain and commonsense reality. There is no such thing as a non-education nor a complete absence of schooling. Every child will be schooled in some form of education, intentional or not, excellent or destructive, for good or ill. Indeed, even if schooling “backfires” and the child comes to hate his schooling as an adult, he has still, nonetheless, been fundamentally encultured by it. After all, rebellion against authority proves the authority’s existence just as much as obedience to it does.

But if education is the process of enculturation, we must then ask: what is our culture and cultural ideal? Sadly, this is likely to be where our particular blueprints each prove to be radically different from one another.

One of the great wonders of the United States is that it is a melting pot of cultures. A Muslim can become an American, while still remaining a Muslim. As can a Hindu or a Buddhist. One can come from Ireland, Italy, China, or any other country and become an American without leaving behind entirely the original culture. I joyfully live this reality out. Since my wife is from Colombia, we speak Spanish at home, and my daughters love arepas as well as pancakes and lengua as well as barbeque ribs.

However, cultures can only properly and cohesively blend together whenever there is an overall philosophy or ideal that binds them all together. Or we might say that a melting pot without a pot is only a mess. Of course, as any who has ever cooked knows, using a pot does not prevent messes by any means, but the use of the pot makes all the difference between making a mess while cooking and simply making a mess.

For the United States, I would argue that this foundational culture would be most practically expressed in the Constitution, perhaps particularly the Bill of Rights. This, after all, is the supreme authority that all American citizens submit themselves to by the very nature of citizenship. It and the principles that it expresses are the pot into which all other cultures ought to be assimilated.

Thus, the chief goal of public education in the U.S. ought to be to prepare students for understanding the Constitution and their responsibilities as citizens under it. And to properly and sufficiently understand that document, students will need to be taught the most important sources from it whence came. Those sources are broadly twofold, Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian. Without some overall understanding of both of those branches of our U.S. heritage, we cannot have a sufficient understanding of our own Constitution and the rights that it enumerates.

I would suggest that our teaching of the Greco-Roman branch at minimum require the reading of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid. Those were the foundational texts for Greek and Roman paideia and were used catechize children into what being an ideal Greek or Roman meant.

The supreme source for understanding our Judeo-Christian heritage is without question the Bible. Spenser hoped that his poem would be for England what the Aeneid was for Rome, but despite the greatness of The Faerie Queene, the Bible already held that cultural center. Indeed, I believe that it can be rightly argued that the very concept of human rights is fundamentally rooted in the Bible.

Love them or hate them, these are the pillars of ideas upon which the Constitution of the United States was established. The Bible is foundational component of the heritage of what it means to be U.S. citizen. To have a public education in the U.S. that does not in some way teach the Bible (as well as Homer and Virgil) seems to me to be as cruel as keeping a child from knowing his father and mother.

Of course, the argument is often made that because the Bible is a religious text, it should be taught by the parents rather than the school. To be honest, I believe that that objection simply does not go far enough. Personally, we homeschool because the Bible explicitly charges parents with their children’s paideia (Ephesian 6:4). And as a Christian, I do not want my daughters to be simply taught about the Bible; I want them to view everything through its lens. But that is why we homeschool, so that we can attempt to give our children the education that we believe best benefits them and society through them. So, personally, I would urge the one raising the objection to go even further in their objections and move toward homeschooling. I believe that there would be an immediate, as well as lasting, benefit to society if the majority of moms chose to stay home and take their children’s education into their own hands.

Nevertheless, public school is a reality, and, for many, it is a necessary reality. And in answer, I return to the foundational matter: what is the purpose of public education, if it fails to teach children about a fundamental aspect of our shared cultural heritage? Failing to do so means making those children into historical orphans. Now I know that history is still taught in public schools; however, without some basic understanding of the Bible, a student cannot properly understand any history from the fall of Rome to relatively recently. Whether orthodox or heretic, saint or scoundrel, the Bible was the book that governed and shaped the ideas and lives of Western history for more than thousand years. One cannot even begin to properly understand that history without some basic knowledge of the Bible. If public education pointedly refuses to teach something so foundational to our culture, then it cannot possibly hope to actually enculture its students, which, by my understanding education, means that public schools are giving a very poor education.