I recently taught a lesson on "Abraham and the Patriarchs" in my World History class. I chose to refer to the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as myths, which I told the children were "enduring stories told to convey ideas." This lesson drew considerable controversy, with many well-educated friends weighing in on my decision. But to all of you who did weigh in, I welcome the chance to respond to your thoughts and concerns. There are three arguments in my apology. The first concerns academic values, the second the why certain cognitive models are inapplicable with the final argument demonstrating why this method is best from the Christian perspective.
1.
One of the very first arguments devised against my methods was that children are not cognitively developed enough to understand how a myth can be empirically false and yet true in a more abstract sense. I do not think this applies only to children, there are many adults who cannot make such distinctions.
If therefore, people (children or adults) are incapable of making those distinctions should we merely let them proceed believing that events which are "regarded as historical although not verifiable" are grounded in the empirical reason used in academic settings. I should say not, in the absence of evidence which explicitly supports the existence of the patriarchs we can draw no conclusion about their existence based on reason and logic. It does no good to ignore the stories as they already know them. Therefore, we ought to teach such stories in school as 'myths' or possibly 'legends' but certainly not history. Even if people cannot grasp the distinction, secondary schools are designed to reinforce the individual's ability to reason not to reinforce cultural or religious values. Ideally, a teacher should also consider the various religious backgrounds of students in their class, though mine are quite uniformly somewhat christian.
2.
Bloom's taxonomic model, created in the 1950s and introduced to me by one of my critics, suggests that children start out learning by remembering, understanding and applying before proceeding to analyzing, evaluating and creating as represented in the following diagram taken from: edorigami.wikispaces.com. 
This seems simple enough but it fails in two ways. First, it fails to take into account the complex environment in which children learn. Children in High School are frequently asked to design projects and compose essays or other assignments. Categorically, these skills belong to the highest level of thinking - creating. By neglecting to teach them how to analyze and evaluate before creating we are by default reducing the quality of their creations. For a more detailed criticism of this model see: http://www.utechtips.com/2007/01/08/blooms-taxonomy-revisited/. In my case, it would be unfair for me to allow my students to construct a poster about the patriarchs if I had not offered them the information necessary to analyze the story and distinguish between important and unimportant "facts."
Moreover, most students from the bible-belt already know the story of the patriarchs from churches and Sunday schools. For me to recite the stories would be redundant. If I offered them a slightly different way to look at and interpret the stories, education would take place. In fact, according to this model's approach we might move out of the lower categories and into the higher ones by basing the lesson on "facts" already in their minds and then offering a new way to look at them.
3.
Aside from the academic reasons I have for refusing to teach "Abraham and the Patriarchs" as historical fact, there are religious reasons for doing so as well. The present system encourages thinking about the world in terms of empirical facts and simply put, the Bible was not meant to withstand such scrutiny. Thus Christians who suddenly become aware of the "facts" have a tendency to, out of shock, reject the facts or reject their religion. Neither of these outcomes are desirable.
Christian children do not need to be taught using a system of absolutes, it is no good in the long run to introduce facts now and introduce qualifiers later especially when it could affect a person's faith. Religious and philosophical truth have abstract characters and should be recognized as such.
Bertrand Russell, one of Christianity's foremost critics argues that the only reason people become religious is because of indoctrination from an early age. Unfortunately, he is correct in more cases than he is not. That is why it is unconscionable to me to skip over the controversial bits (and so leave students in the dark) merely to prevent challenging their faith. I will not contribute to a system that essentially reinforces children's cultural and religious notions and results in their being good docile adult church members who listen to their priest and sing their mass in Latin... A person's faith is part of their personal journey which ought to be challenged at every turn not coddled and given the weak and unreliable support of empirical evidence.
I know that many of you may disagree with me and please continue to do so, I find your comments enlightening, but I hope this post has served to justify to you my teaching methods.
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