The university I work for, Western Governors University, is celebrating fifteen years this year, and it just occurred to me I’ve been around for nearly half those years (the last seven). It started out a pretty amazing idea by some pretty amazing people, turned out to be a pretty amazing university, and I consider it a pretty amazing place to work. Happy birthday, WGU!
history
Bible literacy
I read a controversial article the other day in TIME Magazine: “The Case for Teaching The Bible”, which makes a clear call for courses teaching about the Bible in public high schools. The author, David Van Biema, TIME’s senior religion writer, carefully couches his call with some guidelines, namely that such teaching must be entirely secular and constitutional. The emphasis within the teaching should be on the Bible’s impact on Western history, literature, and culture.
The article mentions a couple of groups producing texts for such classes, including The Bible Literacy Project, which, in cooperation with The First Amendment Center, published a document in 1999 called “The Bible & Public Schools: A First Amendment Guide” and has more recently released a textbook called The Bible and Its Influence.