This coming school year, the Fairfield, Texas, school district, about halfway between Dallas and Houston, will roll out a new K-5 reading program that includes multiple biblical references.
But the staff, hoping to avoid debates over families’ religious beliefs, has chopped roughly 30 sections out of the curriculum, including a kindergarten lesson on the Golden Rule featuring Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and several excerpts about a Christian prayer the governor of Plymouth Colony said at the first Thanksgiving.
The district’s elementary teachers “went through the materials looking for things that may be controversial,” said Superintendent Joe Craig. They didn’t feel those parts of the curriculum “were in line with what we wanted the lesson to focus on.” A kindergarten discussion of the Golden Rule, which stems from the Bible and other religious texts, is among the lessons the Fairfield district in Texas removed from the state’s new K-5 reading program…