Bible Study in Public Education

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It has long been debated whether teaching the Bible in public education would improve our educational system or just help the Christians enlist more members into their religion. Since 1962, the Supreme Court has continued to uphold the ban on all religious practices in public education, including teaching the Bible in classrooms. There are some who believe that this removal of a moral education has lead to a deterioration of the behavior among our students, while others use the protection of the first amendment right to keep the moral teachings of the Bible out of the hands of our public educators. While it is true that it is not the job of the government to decide what religious morals our population must uphold to, teaching the Bible as a piece of literature in public education can enrich our students' learning because of the influence the Bible has had on much of Western Civilization's history and literature.

In 2009 there was a journal published about a study that “assessed the relationship between Bible literacy among secondary school students and their academic achievement and school behavior” by William H. Jeynes (Jeynes 36). The hypothesis was that the deterioration of the behavior among our students was caused my the removal of a moral education through our educational institutions. So they compared the academic achievement and behavior of random students in public high schools and compared them to those from private religious high schools to see if there was a connection. Their findings were that the more Bible literate a student was, the less behavioral problems they had and the higher their grade point average was. They believed that the teachings of the Bible made students follow better learning practices, so the sc...

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...SCO. Web. 29 Mar. 2011. This was a journal of a study on the connections between Bible study and how it affects students academic achievement and school behavior. Their findings were that those who had more exposure to the Bible and its teachings usually had higher grades and had better behavior in school. Jeynes believed that up until 1962 when the Supreme Court eradicated any religious practices in public school, school was where students received a moral education on how to

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behave. In the time from the removal of any religious practices in schools, there has been a surge in juvenile delinquency and he believes that it is due to our youths' Bible illiteracy. He had a clear bias towards supporting Bible study classes in public education by his arguments as to why our youths have followed a trend towards juvenile delinquency in the recent years.

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