Bible Literacy Project News
The Telegraph UK
Poet Laureate Andrew Motion calls for all children to be taught the
Bible
Andrew Motion, the Poet
Laureate, has warned that every child should be taught the Bible at
school or they will fail to properly understand culture and literature.
 By John Bingham
Last Updated: 12:15PM GMT 17 Feb 2009
Mr Motion said that generations of teachers with less and less
knowledge of the Bible had left even the brightest students with a
"sketchy" understanding of once familiar stories.
The poet, who describes himself as an atheist, called for an overhaul of
the school curriculum to reverse the "depressing" trend which threatened
to leave future generations unable to fully understand the works of
Milton and Shakespeare or even more recent writers such as TS Eliot.
The solution, he said, could be to include study of the Bible and other
religious stories into a new wider general studies curriculum as well as
working it into everyday lessons.
Mr Motion, who holds a chair in creative writing at Royal Holloway,
University of London, said that he had struggled to teach Milton's
Paradise Lost to undergraduates because they had no concept of the fall
of man.
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Poet Laureate Andrew Motion Photo: ANDREW
CROWLEY
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"These were all bright students, very hard-working, all with good
A-levels, but their knowledge of the great ancient stories was very
sketchy," he said in an interview.
"So when the time came to talk about Milton, I found very few knew there
had been a civil war. As for the Bible, forget it, they just about knew
who Adam and Eve were."
He insisted that while secularist ideas had put many people off studying
the Bible, parents who do not believe in God should have nothing to fear
from their children learning about the Bible.
"If people say this is about ramming religion down people's throats,
they aren't thinking about it hard enough," he said.
"It is more about the power of these words to connect with deep,
recurring human truths, and also the story of the influence of that
language and those stories."
And he warned that growing ignorance of the great stories of the Bible
as well as classical mythology was becoming an increasingly serious
handicap for those studying literature.
"Many of my students stumble into vaguely mythological stories in their
writing," he said.
"When I ask them anything about the Bible, they frankly, by and large,
don't know.
"I don't particularly blame them for it but I do think there is a real
problem with the education system that has allowed these great stories
to disappear, to fade out of the diet everyone gets at school.
"It's an essential piece of cultural luggage."
Source URL
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/4678369/Poet-Laureate-Andrew-Motion-calls-for-all-children-to-be-taught-the-Bible.html
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