My daughter came home from seventh grade with a stack of stapled papers on Tuesday. I expected the usual—a reading log, some grammar exercises, maybe a study guide for a unit test. Instead, the first page had a picture of Noah’s Ark, and beneath it, a fill-in-the-blank sentence: “God told Noah to build an ark because the earth was filled with __________.”
I flipped through the packet. There were vocabulary words from Genesis, a writing prompt about the moral of the story of Job, and a reading comprehension worksheet about David and Goliath. Every single assignment was based on the Bible.
Her English teacher, a longtime staff member at our local public middle school, had apparently decided to use Scripture as the sole text for all classwork this year. No novels, no short stories, no poetry from other sources. Just the Bible.
At first, I thought it was a unit. Maybe they were studying allegory or religious themes in literature. But my daughter told me they’ve been doing this since September. “We read a verse, answer questions about it, and write a paragraph about the lesson we learned,” she said. “That’s all we do.”
I sat down at the kitchen table and read through the entire packet again. Some of it was harmless enough—Bible stories can be engaging for kids, and they do have literary merit. But as an English curriculum, it felt incredibly narrow. My daughter is eleven. She needs to understand character development, plot structure, different genres, how to analyze a metaphor or argue about an author’s choice of words. Instead, she’s memorizing verses and explaining why it’s important to be kind to strangers.
I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve read enough about public schools to know that there are rules about religion and the curriculum. Teachers can teach about religion in an academic context, but they can’t promote a particular faith or force religious practice into the classroom. This didn’t feel like teaching about religion. It felt like religious instruction disguised as reading comprehension.
The harder part was figuring out what to do. I didn’t want to be the parent who explodes in the principal’s office. I also didn’t want to let my daughter sit through a year of Bible-only English class. So I started paying attention to what was actually happening in her classroom.
I asked her more questions. Did the teacher say anything about other books? No. Did she explain why she chose the Bible? Not really. She just said it’s “the foundation of Western literature” and that students need to understand it. My daughter accepted that explanation, mostly because she didn’t feel like she could push back.
I realized that a lot of parents might feel the same way I did—a vague unease, but no clear sense of whether this was actually inappropriate or just unusual. So I visited the school library one afternoon and asked the librarian if other English teachers used religious texts. She said no, and then she lowered her voice and told me that a few other parents had asked the same question this year.
That was reassuring in a way. I wasn’t overreacting.
But I still had to decide what to do. The most practical step was to talk to the teacher directly. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she had a rationale that made sense in the context of state standards. I emailed her, keeping my tone neutral and curious. I asked if the Bible would be the main text for the entire year and, if so, how that would cover the required reading genres.
She wrote back quickly. “The Bible contains all the literary forms we need—poetry, narrative, wisdom literature, parables. It’s the most efficient way to expose students to high-quality writing.” She ended with, “I’m happy to discuss further.”
I wasn’t satisfied, but I also didn’t want to start a war. So I did what felt most practical: I asked for copies of the district’s curriculum guidelines. I wanted to see what the official expectations were for seventh-grade English. I printed them out and compared them to the weekly assignments my daughter was bringing home.
Here’s what I found: The curriculum required students to read a variety of text types, including informational texts, historical fiction, and at least one novel or play. The Bible-only approach didn’t hit any of those categories. It was all non-fiction and poetry, mostly from a single translation. There was no room for debate, no exposure to different perspectives, and no opportunity for students to develop critical reading skills in a way that involved questioning the text.
That changed things. I wasn’t just expressing a preference anymore. I had a document from the school district itself that showed the teacher’s approach didn’t match the approved standards.
I won’t pretend the confrontation was easy. When I went to the principal, I didn’t say “that teacher is pushing religion.” I said, “I’m concerned that the English curriculum for this class isn’t covering the required genres, and I’d like to know how the school plans to address that.” That framing made it a curriculum issue, not a faith issue. It kept the conversation focused on education, which gave the principal room to act without feeling like she was being accused of allowing religious indoctrination.
The principal actually thanked me. She said she’d received other questions about the same class, but nobody had brought the curriculum alignment to her attention. She promised to review the lesson plans and talk to the teacher. I told her I’d be happy to provide my daughter with supplementary reading at home, but I also made it clear that I expected the school to make sure the class met the same academic standards as the other English sections.
That was about three weeks ago. Since then, there have been some changes. The teacher still uses Bible passages, but she’s also added excerpts from a few other texts—some Greek myths, a short story by Jack London, and a nonfiction article about the history of literacy. It’s not perfect, and it’s certainly not the rich, diverse curriculum I’d hoped for. But the pressure from the principal seems to have opened the door.
My daughter came home yesterday with a worksheet comparing the flood story in the Bible to a similar flood story from an ancient Mesopotamian myth. She rolled her eyes and said, “Why do we have to do this?” But I saw the assignment. It asked her to identify differences in tone and purpose. That’s actual literary analysis. That’s an English skill.
I don’t know how the rest of the year will go. The teacher may double down or find other ways to weave in religious material. I also know that going to the principal doesn’t always end this well for other parents. In some districts, the teacher would be protected, and the parent would be seen as the troublemaker. I’m aware that my situation could have played out very differently.
What I’ve learned is that you don’t need to be a lawyer or an education expert to question a practice that feels wrong. You just need to pay attention to what’s actually being taught, compare it to the official standards, and ask specific questions about coverage and academic goals. It also helps to approach it as a practical gap rather than a moral outrage. People listen when you talk about whether the class is meeting the district’s expectations.
I’m still uneasy about the whole thing. I know the teacher genuinely believes she’s doing the right thing. She’s not trying to convert students—she’s just convinced that the Bible is the best literature they’ll ever read. That’s a hard belief to argue with. But the job of an English teacher isn’t to share her favorite book. It’s to help students become thoughtful, capable readers of many kinds of writing.
I haven’t relented on that, and I won’t. But I’m also not going to pick a fight every single week. I’ve chosen my battle, and now I’m watching to see if anything shifts. It’s messy, and I don’t have a clear ending. I just have a middle schooler who’s learning a little bit more about how school actually works, and a parent who’s realized that sometimes you have to read the curriculum yourself to make sure it’s actually being taught. That’s probably the most useful lesson either of us will get this year.
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