11 November 6 - 12, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents HOLIDAY GUIDE 2025 ON STANDS NOVEMBER 27 SCAN TO SEE LAST YEARS ISSUE To participate in the issue, email [email protected] D people featured in the Bible as a way to teach lessons on spiritual matters,” an intro- duction to the story, which teachers are in- structed to read aloud to their classroom, says. “In the Bible, Jesus told parables to help his followers understand his teachings. These parables were important not only to his followers but also to authors and artists who have used them as inspiration to write new stories that teach lessons.” The same unit includes a reflection ac- tivity following the reading of “The Little Half-Chick,” which is inspired by the Span- ish folktale Medio Pollito. Teachers are in- structed to ask students to reflect on the idea of “Doing unto others as you would have done unto you,” and to “remind them that saying is called the Golden Rule; it comes from the Christian Bible when Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount, and it is an idea common to many religions.” The other religions that observe the Golden Rule are not specified. Another unit, which centers on the American Revolution, discusses how the story of Moses influenced the founding fa- thers and says the writings on the Liberty Bell were inspired by God’s messages about the “Promised Land.” The unit in- troduces the story of Moses as being from “the Hebrew Bible, which is also reorga- nized as the Old Testament of the Chris- tian Bible.” Further references attribute the story to the Bible. Additional refer- ences to God and Christianity appear in the unit’s discussion of unalienable rights and the Founding Fathers’ desire to in- clude prayer in the first meeting of the Continental Congress. Lessons on slavery for third- and fifth- grade classrooms that were reviewed by The New York Times make mention of the way many abolitionists who opposed slavery were Christians. “Even as the use of slave labor grew, op- position to slavery also grew, driven by col- onists morally opposed to the practice, often based on their beliefs as Christians,” a line in the Bluebonnet curriculum, which was not in the original Amplify lesson, reads. The lessons do not point out that some Christians also used their religion to de- fend the practice of slavery. In lessons on the founding fathers, teachers are in- structed to say that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson “realized that slav- ery was wrong and founded the country so that Americans could be free,” without mentioning the fact that both men owned slaves themselves. Two fifth-grade units were especially scrutinized in The New York Times’ review of the learning materials. The first, a lesson on “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” written by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., em- phasizes King’s allusions to the Biblical characters Shadrach, Meshach and Abed- nego, and decenters King’s message on race and racism in America. The second is a unit on the Renaissance, in which the Texas curriculum adds five paragraphs of Biblical context to a lesson on Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” painting. The writings discuss how Jesus’ actions at the Last Supper influenced the Christian tradition of communion, and they include excerpts directly from the Gospel of Matthew that teachers are expected to read aloud. School districts that adopt the Blue- bonnet lesson plans are eligible for $60 per student in state incentives, and prior reporting by the Observer has found that sound North Texas districts are poised to reap millions. Irving ISD will make nearly $2 million off the new learning program, and Duncanville ISD will make close to $700,000. Fort Worth ISD, which faced a steep budget defi- cit in the months leading up to the state’s re- cent decision to take over the district, will net $2.4 million after deducting the cost of printing out the new materials. Adobe Stock The Bible will now play a bigger part in Texas school cirriculum than many are comfortable with.
