From 'The Cat in the Hat' to 'Hamlet' to 'The Lord is my shepherd ... '
- Joanne Jacobs
- Jan 26
- 2 min read
Texas students will read classics, folk and fairy tales, foundational American texts, speeches, poems, biographies of famous Americans -- and some Bible readings -- if the state education board adopts the proposed K-12 reading list, reports Joe Edwards for the Dallas Express.
Parents will be able to opt their children out of works "that conflict with their religious or moral beliefs."
The K-5 list includes:
Kindergarten: Timeless tales like The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss, Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey, Cinderella, The Tortoise and the Hare, and Texas-specific L is for Lone Star. Many are read-alouds, including nursery rhymes and excerpts from Aesop’s fables.
Grade 1: Stories such as The Legend of the Bluebonnet by Tomie dePaola, Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans, The Little Engine That Could, and selections from Fred Rogers’ works.
Grade 2: American heroes and legends like Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan, Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom, and Winnie-the-Pooh (select chapters).
Grade 3: Classics including Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White, Stone Soup, and excerpts featuring historical figures like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.
Grade 4: Works like Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (picture book edition), and poetry by Robert Frost and Langston Hughes.
Grade 5: More advanced selections such as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, A Christmas Carol (adapted), The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, and historical documents like the Declaration of Independence in translation.
Readings will support students' study of history. For example, sixth-graders will read Johnny Tremain, a novel about an apprentice to Paul Revere, Longfellow's Paul Revere’s Ride, Patrick Henry's Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death speech, a book about Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address and Francis Miles Finch's poem, The Blue and The Gray.
The state board will discuss the list this week. If it's adopted, no sooner than April, the full rollout is targeted for 2030 to give times for teacher training and for acquiring resources.
Until now, the state has outlined skills that should be taught, but not content, writes Edwards. Texts were selected by publishers, districts or individual teachers.
Jeremy Wayne Tate, creator of the Classical Learning Test, praises the middle and high school reading list, which includes "The Bible, Homer, Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, Madison, Hamilton, Franklin, Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Shelley, Poe, Tolstoy and Tocqueville."
The Bible passages are controversial, writes Mack Shaw on Fox News. All are classics from the Old Testament and the New Testament, and, I'd argue, part of the Western literary tradition. (By the way, Shaw thinks the Old Testament is "the Christian Bible," which is not the way Jews see it.)
Included are Bible stories, such as Jonah and the Whale, David and Goliath, The Tower of Babel and The Prodigal Son, as well as The Lord Is My Shepherd (Psalm 23), To Everything There is a Season (Ecclesiastes 3), The Definition of Love (1 Corinthians 13), the Beatitudes and others.
Requiring Bible readings violates parents' rights, editorializes the Austin American-Statesman.
2030? It takes four years to train a teacher in how to have her kids read The Cat in the Hat?
Also, "historical documents like the Declaration of Independence in translation." Huh?
The idea that the reading list is important to understanding the writing of others is not supported by the absence of anything from the 21st century or "Romeo and Juliet." And there is no reason to read the Federalist papers in 9th grade English class.
Seems like the easy way to go would be to teach some stories from all of the major world religions. Everyone should be familiar with the beliefs of the major religions.
Texas is busy establishing a state religion, but that won't pass muster with the courts; and its State Board continues the Trump-Abbott Republicans' push towards the centralized indoctrination of Christian nationalism, thus restricting the liberty on the basis of which our nation was founded by replacing it with the top-down government of local curricula; conservative Americans should reject this proposal.
Teaching Bible stories that are part of the Western literary tradition "e.g., the prodigal son", makes sense to me. If the concern is that teachers will use those stories to proselytize, I see and understand that concern; like any other thing a teacher might do wrong, it's better to address that individually with that teacher rather than to deny the instruction to students.
I like that the reading augments the social studies/history lessons. It's smart to do that--which is why my own state will never do such a thing.