From the Podcast: Teaching the Bible with Dr. Craig Perrier

5 min read

On our podcast, Dr. Jeff Kloha interviewed Dr. Craig Perrier, High School Social Studies Curriculum and Instruction Specialist for Fairfax County Public Schools.

Dr. Perrier will be presenting more about the C3 Inquiry Design Model and the museum’s latest C3 Inquiry, “How Has Archaeology Contributed to Our Understanding of the Bible?” at this year's Educator Conference hosted at Museum of the Bible from July 26 through July 28. Visit our page and see all the details.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and space. To get the full interview, listen using the video player above or listen to the episode on our podcast, Today at Museum of the Bible, or on our YouTube channel.

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Jeff Kloha: We are joined today by special guest Dr. Craig Perrier. Thanks for being here. You helped us with some curriculum resources, right?

Craig Perrier: [Yeah,] The C3, the Inquiry Design Model, is a national model that schools and organizations use to develop inquiries for K–12. And we worked on three for the museum, one on archaeology, one on the Gutenberg press, and one on the intersection between science and scripture.

Jeff: And those are available on the website. C3 Teachers Hubs.

Craig: That's right, so anyone on the planet can use them.

Jeff: It's all great, and meet state standards for different areas of the curriculum, correct?

Craig: They’re flexible. Teachers are expected to modify them for your context, but the structure is what Museum of the Bible provided—questions, tasks, and resources—and then teachers decide what they need to modify for their students.

Jeff: Great. So, social studies and Bible—I mean, this is a kind of a conflict area, isn't it? Or how does that work in your setting?

Craig: So, it's not a conflict area; public education, for many years, has been a place where religion needs to be taught as part of the curriculum. It's rare it's not part of a state curriculum. I guess the nuance is that when you teach about a religion, you're not, you know, evangelizing it. So seeing it as a cultural, historical, human phenomenon, and that's part of our world history survey courses.

Jeff: Okay, so is the Bible in particular part of that curriculum, or is it kind of the religious dimension, more religious history?

Craig: So, Virginia has had standards in 2015, right around when I arrived in Fairfax. We just did a revision of those, which will start in 2025. And the Bible is explicitly mentioned as something to know about, as are other religious texts.

Jeff: Yeah, you talk about Islam, you've got to mention the Qur'an, those kinds of things. Part of their history.
So, what [are some] kind of trends or new developments in education? Why do we need new curricula? How does this work in your field?

Craig: New curricula in Virginia, it's a regular, normal event to have revisions every seven years. The trick is, or what's really important, is how every school district enacts that curriculum. So, the state provides a program, a good framework, and they know it's for the entire state.
So, if you're in Fairfax or Newport or Virginia, Virginia Beach, how you enact them is up to that district. Not a total we do whatever we want. But we're nuanced for the population of students. What is your pacing? Where do you want to go deeper? Where do you want to stay? There are survey courses, right? You make decisions about how to enact it. And then what resources to use. So, if one of the schools wants to use the C3 on Gutenberg, it's probably going to be a longer unit, right? And something else will contract.

This excerpt is from an episode of Today at Museum of the Bible. Listen to the whole interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart Radio, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.