Robert Wright
This past Friday, the Texas State Board of Education has approved a state-written curriculum with lessons heavily based in “biblical teachings”. The Bluebonnet Learning curriculum is K-5 optional materials produced by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) that can be implemented in the 2025-2026 school year.
These Christian based materials include lessons such as a kindergarten lesson teaching children about the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”), taught with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Another kindergarten lesson focused on the Book of Genesis and artworks inspired by it. A third grade unit on ancient Rome includes a section devoted to the life of Jesus and Christianity in the Roman Empire, while a fifth grade poetry unit includes passages from the book of psalms in the Old Testament.
The TEA insists that the materials “were developed using the best evidence from cognitive science to ensure teachers have access to quality, on-grade-level materials that enable teachers to focus on delivering the highest-quality instruction and providing differentiated supports to students” in a press release from May of this year.
The TEA is pushing out this curriculum to the nearly seven thousand public elementary schools hosting over two million students with a significant financial incentive for the schools that adopt the curriculum. The TEA is issuing $160 million in services and support approximating to $60 per student enrolled in the school. This is in a year where school district are facing major budget deficits (in part due to the loss of Federal funding from the pandemic) with many school districts having to consider and propose major cuts in education. For example, Austin Independent School District sits at a $119 million deficit with the school board having to discuss hypothetical budget cuts to begin to close the gap. Such cuts include ending stipends to Bilingual and Special Education positions which are notoriously hard to fill, getting rid of nurses in the schools, and replacing librarians with aides.
One Austin educator, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Worker, “It is just awful, we’re already broke, we’re struggling. All of us. The teachers, the kids. We can’t even afford to have our own curriculum or textbooks….” In reference to the substantial funding backing this curriculum, the educator said the legislators put billions “that should be going to our schools into this curriculum and wave that money in our face so that we desperately adopt it.”
This move from the Texas State Legislator is far from the first—and last—attempt of a reactionary attack on education. In 2023, Texas’ House passed a bill that would allow schools to employ unlicensed, uncertified chaplains in place of professionals mental and behavioral health services in schools. Lt. Gov Dan Patrick has also pledged to force the placement of the Ten Commandments into classrooms across Texas in 2025, all at the tone of Governor Greg Abbott holding public school funding hostage to push the passing of school vouchers to move students out of public school and into private schooling, approximately 75% of which are religious, mainly Catholic.
The same Ten Commandments legislation passed in Louisiana but was struck down by a Federal judge earlier this month. Also earlier this month, the Oklahoma Education Department opened the Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism as a means to “promote expressions of religion and patriotism in public schools.”
It is unlikely that teachers will take such legislation in silence. A Texas elementary school teacher told The Worker “I plan to discuss these changes with other teachers and how its another example of the legislatures lack of respect or concern for us as professionals and for our students, and will stand with any teachers who also speak up and fight back, whether at my school or others.”
Image: Texas Governor Greg Abbott signs the Bible used at a promotion service for the Texas Air National Guard in 2016, Defense Visual Information Distribution Service.
