Texas organization helps schools get Ten Commandments displayed in classrooms, calling it important historical document
By Lacey Beasley, Julia Falcon
Click here for updates on this story
TEXAS (KTVT) — The Ten Commandments law went into effect earlier this month, meaning posters displaying the religious foundations are slowly showing up in classrooms across the state. Some districts are buying them and others are relying on donations.
One organization, Texas Values, is leading the rollout. It’s one of the groups that helped pass Senate Bill 10.
Organizers believe that by hanging the Ten Commandments it helps students understand the foundation of the United States.
“We feel like the Ten Commandments are an important historical document,” said Jonathan Covey, with Texas Values. “This has been something that we’ve worked on for a few sessions.”
Here’s what you need to know about SB 10:
Posters must either be donated or campuses can use district funds to buy them voluntarily. Must be framed 16 x 20 inches Must be displayed in a visible part of the classroom. According to restoreamericanschools.com, over 4,600 schools have been adopted so far, which means there are posters hanging in classrooms already or there are posters on the way. That’s out of 9,088 campuses across Texas.
Lacey Beasley: Walk me through this process. Where do you guys get the posters, and how does it get from you guys to the classroom?
Jonathan Covey: We partnered with a number of other organizations as kind of a coalition to create a website. It’s called restoreamericanschools.com. Through the website, you can order posters for the schools that you want to adopt as a volunteer. They’ll be shipped to your home, and then you can take them and drop them off at the school.
Beasley: Why are you a supporter of having the Ten Commandments displayed in public school classrooms?
Covey: Whether or not you’re even a religious person, it’s undeniable that concepts like prohibitions against theft, prohibitions against murder, and honoring your father and your mother, those ideas have shaped the foundations of a lot of legal codes, but especially those in the United States.
Beasley: There’s no denying this is a religious text in the christian bible. Is that pushing a christian agenda into classrooms?
Covey: That’s the coercion argument. The great thing about America is that we can disagree, and sometimes we might be offended, but the supreme court has been very clear that just because you’re offended by a display doesn’t mean that you’re being coerced by that display. If people are offended by straight up facts, you’re going to have a bumpy life ahead of you.
Beasley: What is stopping teachers from hanging text from other religious accounts?
Covey: I don’t know if anything that’s stopping them.
Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.