No single book has been more influential on our history, culture, and civilization than the Bible. Yet it is not allowed into our schools.
First, I think that advocacy of religion in public schools is a terrible idea. It would create an endless string of problems and battles, beginning with whose religion to advocate and ending with the inevitable bad teaching that you find in public schools. Do the religious folks in this forum really want to entrust the teaching of religious doctrine to the public schools?
And second, while I agree that the bible and the history of judeo-christianity should be taught in public schools, as you can see from this thread, if, as you suggest, it is taught as a literary and philosophical work, fundamentalist Christians will scream and whine because it isn't being taught as fact. It seems to be an insurmountable problem.
Yes, it does. But this is a recent phenomenon. It wasn't always the case.
I completely disagree with the concept of content neutrality in education which half the Supreme Court has ruled by. I don't think there is such as a thing as neutrality in education. We aren't neutral people.
And I agree with you that entrusting the education of these important works to teachers who are actively resistant to them is detrimental. Imagine letting PatrickHenry and Right Wing Professor teach the Bible!
But of course academic freedom would not prevent them from pinging their ideas. Some kind of freedom is necessary for right ideas to prevail.
The answer then, short of being insurmountable, is a change in the concept of public education. This will be especially necessary if our government insists that public education will not allow academic freedom.