Lawrence Hall, HSG
Teaching
a Bible in Public Schools
For Miz Grundy and Reverend Gantry
Surely a teacher could choose
his own Bible
This shouldn’t be as difficult
as it seems
It couldn’t possibly be forbidden
or liable
To teach the children from the Douay-Rheims
2
August 2024
I confess to you and to almighty
God that I long earned my daily bread as an English teacher in high school and
as a part-time adjunct faculty instructor of no status whatsoever in several
nice little community colleges and universities.
English literature obtains in a
Christian milieu even from Anglo-Saxon / Old English times. From the earliest
known pieces until 1535 the culture is exclusively Catholic; from then on the
culture tends to be within the Reformation usages. This is a reality to be
understood, not a point of propaganda.
Dr. David Hadas, of happy
memory, was my professor at an NEH program at Bread Loaf years ago. He was
brilliant, generous, open, challenging, joyful, and indulgent to a lot of high
school teachers in a summer class sponsored by the National Endowment for the
Humanities.
Several of us figured out that
Dr. Hadas was Jewish, and I was chosen (no pun) to ask him why he always
carried a King James Bible to his lectures. We noted that he almost never
referred to it because he knew it deeply. His response was, and this remembered
quote is probably almost exact, "I teach English literature, and if you
don't know the King James Bible you don't know English literature."
His intellectual openness and
honest are quite at variance with the unhappy Elmer Gantrys demanding that the
Bible (presumably not the Hebrew Bible or the Vulgate) be force-fitted in
inappropriate contexts in public schools. He well knew the difference between
teaching and "preaching at."
Beloved
professor passes away after long illness - Student Life Archives (studlife.com)
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