June 26 (Reuters) – The Texas Board of \u2060Education \u2060on Friday approved mandated \u2060reading lists for public school children that include\u00a0passages from \u200bthe Bible – the latest effort by leaders there to infuse the \u200ceducation\u00a0system with conservative and religious \u200cideals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Republican-dominated board, in a 9-5 vote with one member \u2060absent and \u2060not voting, approved the reading lists for over 5 \u200bmillion public school students beginning in 2030.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Texas had already mandated that the Bible’s Ten Commandments be displayed in all public schools, a decision that \u200bwas upheld by a federal appeals court earlier this year, following \u2060on the \u2060heels of other \u2060Republican-led states \u200bseeking to infuse public education with Christian teachings.<\/p>\n
Critics say these decisions are \u200bat odds with \u2060the Constitution’s “establishment clause,” long understood by courts as separating church and state. Supporters say the measures restore basic Judeo-Christian teachings to school systems, which many have said are historically significant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The required reading list \u2060is wide-ranging and includes mostly non-Biblical and classical texts, such as \u2060Aesop’s fables, tales about Native Americans, and a children’s versions of Don Quixote. Critics have noted that much of the list comprises texts written by white male authors, in a state with a majority of Latino and Black students.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rachel Laser, the head of the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a written statement \u2060that the Texas board of education’s decision sought to “misuse public schools to impose one narrow set of religious beliefs and indoctrinate a new generation of Americans in the lie that \u200bAmerica is a Christian country.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in \u200bColorado; Editing by David Gregorio)<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Thomson Reuters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"June 26 (Reuters) – The Texas Board of \u2060Education \u2060on Friday approved mandated \u2060reading lists for public school…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[70083,163,70081,27,29,28,26043],"class_list":["post-351996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-collections-top-news","tag-education","tag-reuters","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-top-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}