OUR BLOG

Posted on

Reforming Public Schools

by William Bronson 19 Sept 2026

What does a person do when he sets out to reform a beloved American institution? The public schools of America were once the pride of our nation, the mechanism for the melting pot of our society. It thrived on our national pride of welcoming people from all over the world who sought better lives in the land of opportunity,

Unfortunately, our society has devolved into a cultural fist fight with all segments throwing whatever is at hand at each other with malicious intent. Our public school system has also devolved into attempts at stopping the brawling. How did we get this way?

Any attempt to reform a system has to begin by recognizing a problem. The problem with public schools in America is obvious. Literacy rates have fallen dramatically and behavior has become abysmal. While eighty percent of young people are trying to get an education in public schools, the crime, addictions, and behavior, even suicides among students is depressingly high. Depression and a sense of hopelessness and meaninglessness abound.

How did this happen and who is at fault? The usual culprits to blame are cell phones, the entertainment industry, materialism, and a precipitous decline in morals and manners. But I would argue that these are symptoms not causes.

So what are the causes? I am unwilling to enter the blame game. Teachers are doing their best to stop this tide of disfunction. Administrators and support staff are also doing their best as reflected in the amount of monetary and other resources directed toward solutions. I would argue that the sources of the problems are missing ingredients in our curricula- Ancient Wisdom.

Let me give you an analogy. NFL teams have recently been exploring the connection between performance and diet. Tom Brady and his former wife Gisele Bundchen put a high priority on what they ate. When you want top performance from your body, many top athletes will tell you it is important how you eat.

I would argue that key ingredients are missing in what we feed the hearts and souls of our young people in public schools. School lunches, junk food, and soda machines don’t help their bodies and minds much either.

But when I say the missing ingredients are Ancient Wisdom, I am not only referring  to our curriculum of the same name, but its contents.

Let me give you an example. The current fight over whether schools in Texas are out of line by wanting to hang copies of the Ten Commandments on their walls is an issue worth reflecting on. The argument against is that it appears to be an endorsement of a particular religion, either Judaism and/or Christianity. The Supreme Court has ruled that public schools cannot promote or denigrate any particular religion. But its opinions also allow for the study of certain religious texts for their importance to history, literature, government, philosophy or other secular interests. That is why our curriculum is within bounds when we encourage polite discussion of the ten commandments, for example, as a source of ancient wisdom. Most people, although challenged to name more than three of the ten, would agree that it is not a bad idea to refrain from murder, adultery, stealing, and lying. On the other hand, coveting has become a national pastime. And honoring one’s parents isn’t particularly high on young people’s list of things to do. Sabbath keeping is long gone and Sunday has become a hay day of activity of all kinds to the detriment of our national physical and mental health.

Other examples of ancient wisdom are Jesus’ admonitions to love one’s neighbor, forgive one another, and walk in humility. Currently psychologists have recognized how detrimental to mental health is the nurturing of grudges. One can imagine a much better world where these virtues were widespread.

Our curriculum surveys world religions and most agree that these are universal values embraced worldwide.

The missing ingredients in our curricula are the babies thrown out with the bath water. The bath water being the attempt to turn our public schools into doctrinaire religion factories. The babies are the invaluable virtues that most religions admire.

Because of ill-advised overreach by some religious fanatics to extend their “faith” into public schools, the courts put them down. But because school districts feared litigation, they over reacted and threw out the helpless and healthy babies, the discussion of healthy virtues.

A public school sponsoring prayer is a disallowed over reach and justifiably so. But to discourage private, personal, quiet prayer is a violation of our first amendment rights. Decades ago, when transcendental meditation was a fad, it was ok because it wasn’t Christian but more Buddhist, until the courts shut TM down. But if we ever needed to encourage students to connect with their “higher power”, it is now.

So let’s try together to re-introduce polite discussions of universal ethics, values, morals, and manners back into our public schools and tap into ancient wisdom so that young people can connect with ideas that have proven to be valuable to people’s mental and physical health over the centuries.

Posted on

Bible Literacy Quiz

Dear Friends, if there is any question about the need for more Bible knowledge among our young people and others today, try out some of these questions on people you may know and consider viewing this talk by Stephen Prothero, Boston University professor and author of Religious Literacy:  Bing Videos

  1. What are the two main parts of the Bible?
  2. What three major religions look to parts of the Bible for inspiration?
  3. What are the first four books of the Old Testament called?
  4. Who supposedly wrote them?
  5. Can you name these books?
  6. What was the name of the tree in the Garden of Eden that Adam and Eve were not supposed to eat from?
  7. Adam and Eve had a son who killed his brother. What was his name?
  8. Who said: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
  9. Who built the ark to save his family from a great flood?
  10. Can you name any of the four major prophets who have books named after them?
  11. Can you name any of the minor prophets?
  12. What is the name of the book that is called the song book of Israel?
  13. How many times did Joshua march around the walls of Jericho?
  14. Who, as a young man, did David kill?
  15. How was Elijah taken up to heaven?
  16. Who did he leave his mantle to?
  17. Who was Samson’s girl friend and what was he known for?
  18. Who was thrown into the lion’s den and why?
  19. How did Esther save her people?
  20. What are the first four books of the New Testament and what are they called?
  21. Can you name any of the disciples of Jesus?
  22. Which disciple betrayed him?
  23. Which disciple denied knowing him?
  24. Who were Jesus’ parents?
  25. Who met Jesus on the road to Damascus?
  26. Who wrote most of the books of the New Testament?
  27. Who spoke the Beatitudes?
  28. Who gave the Sermon on the Mount?
  29. What is the Golden Rule?
  30. What is the last book of the Bible?
Posted on

An Update from EEC Founder and President – William Bronson, March 17, 2026

Dear Friends, I am excited to announce that our curriculum for public high schoolers will soon be available in book form from Amazon, both as a soft back and an eBook. We have titled it – Recovering Ancient Wisdom. It should be available next month.

As you know we have designed it to meet the criteria set by the courts of having a secular purpose and does not promote or denigrate any particular world view. The Bible and Public Schools, A First Amendment Guide is available on our Resource Page. The Guide is endorsed by many interfaith and other organizations including the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. We have also included an endorsement of the Guide by the American Civil Liberties Union, (ACLU).

Our major focus now is to bring to the attention of school administrators and teachers that this curriculum is available and it could fill a major gap in the education of our young people, especially high school students in public schools.

I encourage you to buy a copy as soon as it is available and share it with friends, especially those who may be involved in public education. Thanks.

Our organization, EEC, can provide consultants to school districts regarding how best to use this curriculum/book in their schools. Please have any administrators you know contact me at 239  940 6080 or email willbronson7@gmail.com

William Bronson, MA, MTS, DMin

Posted on

Is it legal to teach about religion in public schools?

It may be illegal to teach religion in public schools, but is it illegal to teach about religion in public schools?

ChatGPT said:

Great question — and the distinction you’re making is very important legally and educationally.

✅ It is NOT illegal to teach about religion in public schools.

In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that teaching about religion, when done objectively and as part of a secular educational program (e.g., in courses like history, literature, or social studies), is constitutionally permissible and can even be beneficial.

🚫 What is illegal:

  • Public school teachers or administrators promoting, endorsing, or leading religious activities (like prayer or proselytizing).
  • Teaching religion as truth or advocating adherence to specific religious beliefs — that would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

✅ What is legal and encouraged:

  • Teaching about the historical, cultural, and literary impact of religion.
  • Offering comparative religion or world religions courses.
  • Discussing religious texts (like the Bible or Quran) as literature or historical documents, not sacred truth.
  • Educating students on the role of religion in events like the Reformation, the founding of the U.S., or civil rights movements.

Key legal principle:

The instruction must be academic, not devotional.

If you’re a teacher or student navigating this line, the First Amendment Center and organizations like Teaching Tolerance (Learning for Justice) provide good guidelines on how to teach about religion appropriately in public schools.

Posted on

Give Send Go

Dear Friends,  EnlightenEducationCo-op is now available on the crowd funding website: GiveSendGo.com.

Please visit this website and consider a donation  And please advise your friends to do the same either through your email list or social media such as Facebook.

We are easy to find. Just go to the site: www.GiveSendGo.com and click on the search icon and type in Bible in Public Schools or something like that and you will find us. Of course regular small donations work well for our budgeting purposes. I will keep you advised on our progress. Many blessings!

William Bronson

PS You can also just type in Bronson and it will bring you to our page.

Posted on

A Call to Awaken the American Church – 23 February 2025 – William Bronson

For if the trumpet makes an uncertain sound, who will prepare for battle? I Corinthians 14:8

It has become increasingly obvious that our planet is involved in spiritual warfare. Many believe that things are drawing to a climax where the good are getting better and the bad are getting worse. Armageddon is in sight. In recent decades, science has given us the ability to destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons, two of which were used by Americans against Japan to end the Second World War. We were the first to have this technology, but now many nations have nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

Biological warfare has been developed with equal menacing capabilities as we saw in the recent Covid pandemic. And now artificial intelligence is threatening both promise and apocalypse. 

Within this scenario, what is the Church to do? The most significant event in world history is arguably the life, death, and proclaimed resurrection of the Man of Galilee. He was a Jewish prophet, some say Messiah, who lived only thirty-three years and acquired no wealth. He preached for three years and was condemned to death for claiming to be God. His self-proclaimed prophecy that He would rise from the dead was witnessed by hundreds in Israel who went on to found the largest religion in the world based on the writings contained in the Bible. So profound was His influence that history is divided between years before and after His birth. 

This Bible has an interesting story to tell. It begins with God creating the heavens and the earth and humankind, male and female. Apparently, before the earth was created God created billions of spiritual beings called angels, one of which rebelled against God and was exiled with a third of the angels to planet Earth. The angel, Lucifer, tempted the first humans to disobey God, and they, Adam and Eve, were cast out of the Garden of Eden. The rest of the Bible is the story about what lengths God went to reconcile the broken relationship with humankind.

The New Testament begins with four different accounts of the life of Christ, the miracles He did, and His claim to be “the only begotten Son of God…” who by believing in Him one could regain eternal life. Jesus often taught in parables. One famous parable is about the prodigal son who claimed his inheritance and nearly destroyed himself in dissolute living. Coming to his senses, he decides to return to his father and beg forgiveness. Hoping to be accepted as a servant, the prodigal sees his father running toward him and with joy accepts him with open arms. In a similar scene, Jesus ends His days on earth with His arms nailed to a cross and asking God, His Father, to forgive them, “for they know not what they do.”

The Bible ends with the scene of Jesus returning from heaven, judging the living and the dead, and creating a new heaven and earth filled with joy and purified of sin and sinners.

That in a nutshell is the story that created the world’s largest religion and resulted in the Bible becoming the best-selling book of all time and a strong incentive toward near universal literacy.

So if you were the Devil, what would you do to defeat this beautiful plan of God? If you asked me, I would say I would try to keep everyone illiterate so they couldn’t read the Bible. That worked for over a thousand years until people started to translate the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into local languages and the printing press made them cheap enough that an average person could get a copy and learn to read.

Plan two of the Devil would be to distract people with wine, women, and song, so to speak, or money and power, and lie to, kill and destroy anyone so distracted. Jesus said: You must choose between God and money. The Devil would also argue God’s non-existence based on all the evil in the world, ironically most of which was of the Devil’s own doing.

A recent and particularly effective scheme to keep prodigals from finding their way back to God is to break down the family. First, if I were the Devil, I would create massive income inequality that forced parents to nearly work themselves to death and have no time to teach their children well. Most families in the U. S. live nervously paycheck to paycheck. Then I would send most of the children, currently 80%, to compulsory public schools where it was not allowed to mention the Bible. Then I would try to addict the children to drugs and distract them with so called entertainment or narcissistic materialism. Does this seem to describe our current culture? Is the Devil winning the spiritual warfare against our children.

Let’s look back to the 1700’s. Europeans came to America to escape a corrupt church that required attendance or jail. As colonies, they rebelled against taxation and control and founded an independent Republic where “all men are created equal and were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Their Bill of Rights insured freedom of expression, and that Congress would make “no law respecting and establishment of religion nor preventing the free exercise thereof.” The founders agreed that this form of government would fail unless the people maintained a strong moral character based on principles found in the Bible and ordered thousands of copies to be printed and distributed by the government.

Fast forward to today and we see massive compulsory public education where the Bible is not allowed and morals run amok with disrespect of teachers, disruptive drugs and dress, and school shootings. And I ask, “where is the church in all this?”

We have seen a laudable growth in Christian schools and home education where parents are stepping up to secure a good and godly education for their children if, and this is a big if, the parents have the intellectual and financial means to take their children out of public schools.

But what of the 80% of our next generation upon whom our Republic depends for its survival? What is the church doing about them? Practically nothing. A few timid attempts to allow the Bible and prayer in schools turned back by a few atheist parents who suited the school districts resulting in court cases and expenses that schools have decided to avoid by avoiding any discussion of religion.

It is argued that if you allow the Bible into the curriculum, you will have to allow every religion to be taught and that is impractical. The rationale for allowing the Bible to be taught is because of its overwhelming influence on Western culture from history, to literature, to art and music, politics and religion. The same cannot be said for the other religions. For a person to be well educated they need to have at least a basic understanding of the books of the Bible and sadly that is not the case today. A growing percent of high school graduates are functionally illiterate, can barely read, and know little to nothing about the Bible, the book that has had more influence on the world than any other piece of literature.

The case for teaching about the Bible in the public schools is clear. And it is time for the church to say so and do something about it.

What specifically should they do? Insist that their local school districts provide a Bible curriculum that meets the guidelines set by the courts; if that curriculum has a secular purpose and neither promotes nor denigrates any particular world view, it is perfectly legal. Our organization, Enlighten Education Co-op has produced such a curriculum and placed it in the public domain and is available to download from our website site at no cost. It is available for anyone to use. Please do so for the sake of our nation and its children.

For more information contact: William Bronson, 239 940 6080, willbronson7@gmail.com, www.EnlightenEducationCo-op.org

Posted on

January 2025

www.EnlightenEducationCo-Op.org

2805 East 5th Street Lehigh Acres, Florida 33972

Dear Friend, 

About seven years ago, I started Enlighten Education Co-op, a Florida LLC. I saw a need to help youngsters who were trying to get an education in public schools. The current social and educational environment makes that difficult for all the reasons we all know too well.

One idea we came up with was to raise money to hire retired teachers on a part-time basis and offer them as teacher assistants to school districts. Today’s teachers need help, and most would value having another adult in their classrooms. However, I was unsuccessful in raising enough money to fund this initiative. Our organization, EEC, is still willing and able to coordinate this initiative with school districts that request us to do that, but they would need to pay these retired teachers and others as they do now in many cases.

More recently, I created a curriculum that would re-introduce religious studies into the classrooms. It follows guidelines set by the courts regarding secular purpose, no undue entanglement of church and state, and neither promotes nor denigrates any particular religious world view.

For several generations, religion in general and the Bible in particular have not been studied in public schools in America. This has left a huge hole in children’s understanding of the traditional bases for finding meaning and values in life. Religion and the Bible have played a large role in the minds of western leaders, writers, musicians, artists, academics, and politicians. Without this knowledge, our students have been set adrift in a world distracted by materialism and entertainment without a moral compass.

The curriculum that I created to address this deficit can be found on our website at www.EnlightenEducationCo-op.org. along with a Sense of Congress Resolution that addresses these issues. I have put the curriculum into public domain so that any school district may incorporate it into their academics with or without changes at no cost.

Our organization, EEC, stands ready to assist and facilitate in any way any school districts that want to use this curriculum and/or our services in this regard. To do so, however, we must raise enough money to pay our staff. The amount of money we can raise will relate directly to the extent and speed at which this initiative will be accomplished. I assure you that it will be carefully and wisely spent. The by-laws of our organization are also available on our website and are designed to provide the transparency, efficiency, and scalability of this project.

Contributions are not tax deductible in that we have transitioned from our former status as a 501c3. Please consider donating to this cause because we will all benefit from having future citizens well informed in matters traditionally deemed necessary by our founders to the survival of our Republic.

Donations can be made on our website or sent to Enlighten Education Co-op, 2805 E. 5th Street, Lehigh Acres, Florida, 33972. Feel free to call me on my cell for any further information at 239 940 6080. Please forward (BCC) this request to any of your friends. Thank you so much!  William Bronson

“do justice, love kindness, walk humbly…”

Posted on

Remarks of William Bronson to Lee County School Board 19 November 2024

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I will be leaving four documents with the School Board. 

The first is a 110-page curriculum for teaching religion. It is in three parts, a survey of world religions, and surveys of Old Testament and New Testament literature. It conforms to the requirements set by the courts as having a secular purpose, creates no undue entanglement between church and state, and neither promotes nor denigrates any religious worldview.

The second document is a rationale for teaching religion in public schools.

The third is a Guideline for doing so prepared by the First Amendment Center now under the auspices of the Freedom Forum in Washington DC.

And the fourth is an endorsement by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)

There is a growing consensus that removing the study of religion in public schools has had the unintended consequence of minimizing its importance to a well-rounded education and its basis for a sense of meaning and discipline among students. Litigation over how this is done has caused public school administrators to take a cautious approach and generally abandon attempts to address this difficult issue regarding the separation of church and state.

I would advise the board to take a proactive approach to this and adopt a method of handling this issue within the parameters set by the courts. Our curriculum does that and we’ve put it into the public domain and is available to anyone from our website. It deserves your careful consideration.

Our organization is available for consulting on implementation strategies and other issues.

William Bronson, MA, MTS, DMin
President, Enlighten Education Co-op, Inc.
239 940 6080

Mr. Bronson’s presentation to the Lee County School Board:

Posted on

The Voucher Revolution by William Bronson, MA, MTS, DMin

November 2024

There are two major crises facing the United States: health and education. Both could be solved in short order by utilizing the most powerful free market tool: the voucher.

Let me explain why it works so well. Currently, and for some time, the professionals in these trades have had a lock on the market. In the case of health care, the insurance companies, the hospitals, big pharma, and doctors have played a nifty game where they all scratch each other’s backs. Left out of this equation is the consumer, assumed to be too stupid to know what is good for him.

The same is true in education. Whether we like it or not, it is a caste system. Parents who can’t afford private education must rely on what they get from the public school system. In 1980, as Chairman of the Education Voucher Study Committee working under the auspices of the Boston Finance Commission, we attempted to change that. It was a version of the UBI, universal basic income, idea but the dollars were restricted to educational purposes. Everyone, regardless of income, would get a variety of vouchers for their school age children. Again, it is assumed that parents are too stupid to know what is best for their children and can’t be trusted with so much money.

The only school that would have to accept a child was the public school closest to her or him, geographically. The child could apply to any school that the parents wanted and could afford based on the voucher subsidy. This voucher would be enough for the local principal to run her or his school. 

The argument was that the public schools would be stuck with the deplorables, and the schools couldn’t manage without additional money. The answer is: that may be true, but there are a variety of “add on” vouchers that address that issue, based on family income, special needs, vocational training and so on.

The reality is that about 80% of children will attend public schools and we don’t anticipate that that will change much as long as the principals are answerable to a bureaucracy, not to the parents of their students. In effect, it would turn all public schools into private schools where their funding comes through the parents not the school district. That is the genius of this system: it puts genuine free market principles (and principals) to work.

If Americans have the guts to really rely on free market forces, Adam Smith’s invisible hand, they could solve their problems quickly. Right now, we have basically a socialist monopoly running our public schools.

The same would be true if we had the guts to give Americans a voucher for their health care and trust them to spend it wisely. How much better to have 300 million citizens with a stake in getting value for money spent rather than having all those choices rammed down our throats by “experts” who are sometimes biased about what we need because of kickbacks of various kinds. It is a sad fact that about half of oncologists’ income is derived from companies whose chemotherapies they wouldn’t give their family members or themselves.

We brag about how we love free enterprise, but we have allowed ourselves to be snookered into a corner where all the decisions are made by the oligarchies whose lobbyists eliminate competition, liability for their products, and push for consolidation. That may be why big agriculture, big pharma, big chemicals, big foods, and all the other bigs have maneuvered to control big media and big tech, so that the “average Joe” can be hoodwinked at every turn. Whether you are a farmer forced to buy sterile GMO seeds every year or be suited by a raft of lawyers, or a patient who wants to try “alternative medicine,” or a parent who wants to homeschool her child, the system is against you, and you end up, if you are able, paying through the nose for what you actually want and need.

Do you think that all the pharmaceutical ads on TV might be a payoff against objective reporting about their products? Media’s life blood used to be whistles blowing foul! Those days are gone. They promote the hand that feeds them.

Think about it. Would you rather have an allowance to stay healthy with a catastrophic insurance backup policy, or continue to watch your teeth and health rot because the system is too cheap to let you get your mouth fixed?

Would you rather have a principal of your child’s school worry about meeting your expectations or just have him worry about keeping his boss happy.

The choice is yours. Talk to your legislators and demand creative legislation that puts competition back in our economy and stop socialistic monopolies for the rich and dog eat dog capitalism for the poor.