British Poet Laureate Andrew Motion said in an interview that he believes that the Old and New Testament should be taught in schools, along with the Koran, much in the same way that Greek and Roman myths are taught.
Sounds like a good idea to me.
The Bible is one of the core works in the western consciousness. Even without wanting to we assume that our readers have a working knowledge of some basic Bible stories.
Not teaching the Bible is like not teaching Shakespeare. Sure you can still function in modern literature without knowledge of Shakespeare, but without it you would be missing out on some major parts of modern literature.
I had this made very clear to me the other day when my students were reading The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. They didn’t understand why Lucy was called a Daughter of Eve. They wondered how the Faun knew her mother’s name.
Western writers assume their readers have a basic familiarity with Greek and Roman myths, and with the Bible. Because of this it makes sense to teach bible stories in the same way that we teach the myths.
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March 3, 2009 at 7:44 pm
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