Belief as an Obstacle to Reading: The case of the Bible?

The basic premise of this article is that the Bible is much neglected within education in general and literature education in particular. Despite being of seminal literary and cultural importance, the Bible is maginalized by teachers and read very little by children in classrooms in both the US and UK. Accounting for this omission from the school curriculum is not a simple matter, for a complex network of beliefs (about reading, teaching, education, culture and literature) held by various individuals and groups contribute to the widespread neglect of this most influential text. These beliefs and their influence upon activity in the classroom are evaluated here and it is argued that being the subject of strongly held beliefs should not exempt the Bible from the sort of study other canonical texts receive. That it provokes contention is not believed to be a just and sufficient cause for a work as significant as the Bible to escape the attention of teachers and pupils both in literature lessons and across the curriculum.