A state lawmaker shares his thoughts on a bill that would add an elective to public school education.

Senate File 510 would require the state Board of Education to create standards to teach Hebrew scriptures and the Bible in public schools, as an elective. District 24 Senator Jesse Green tells Raccoon Valley Radio that if school districts want to offer that to students, they should have the ability to do so. He expresses his thoughts about how this bill ties into the classroom, when he considers what the Bible and Hebrew scriptures lay the foundation of Western Civilization and civics education.

“It’s pretty hard to have a conversation about that without talking about the Old Testament (from the Bible) and where did our system of laws come from. They didn’t just happen in recent history, they didn’t just happen in Europe, they happened in Israel surrounding the Jews and the Hebrew people. And so, I think that’s where a lot of the drive comes from to have this because it could be such a thing that a history teacher or a civics teacher may want to include something like this into their studies.”    

Green explains why this bill doesn’t violate one of the US bedrock principles of separation of church and state.

“What that really means is we don’t have government imposed forcing people to participate in a certain religion or whatever. That’s where this whole elective idea comes from is that this would be an elective, it would be a choice, no student can be forced to participate in this. I fully support it from that standpoint.”     

Green adds that he wouldn’t mind if other religious texts could be studied and examined too and welcomes conversations about that.