March 8th Blog for Critique

Bishop's main purpose in his chapter 5 explanation of how religion has affected the Sort and contributed to our segregation is to inform the reader. This chapter provides a lot of substance, even more so than previous chapters, using many references to past events and other relevant facts. From what I read, there didn't seem like much of Bishops personal opinion in the chapter. I think he stuck strictly to trying to inform the reader on the topic as opposed to persuading us to join his side on something, so I can't say that I agree or disagree on anything that he said. I do, however, feel like he did a great job with explaining how each piece of information he used was relevant to the chapter as a whole. One thing I thought he could have improved on was that he switched topics quite often which proved to be a bit confusing at times and made it hard to keep up with each example he used.
One of the main points that Bishop made in Chapter 5 was the feud over textbooks in West Virginia in which thousands of people believe that newly appointed textbooks by the school board were "anti-American" and "antireligious." It got to the point where parents kept their children home and schools were emptied. Bishop relates this event to the bigger picture by referencing Don J. Goode who did a study ten years later on the people who opposed the books and the people who didn't. The study came to show that the textbook opponents were more in favor of religion in schools and in discipline. Supporters of the textbooks said schools should provide social services and afterschool programs.
Another main point that Bishop addressed was in 1969 when Alice Moore tried to ban the new sex education curriculum from schools. Moore argued that the class was a "denial of God." Although Dr. Carl Tully tried running against her in office, she won and the classes were eventually banned by 1970. Moore then went on to question the African American dialect used in textbooks in 1974 saying that the view in the books were that from a black perspective but that there was no middle class white perspective used in the book. The books were criticized in the newspaper and once again, much like in West Virginia, children were pulled from schools.
Bishop did a great job in informing the reader on this particular topic. He used valid facts and hard evidence to convey the point that religion was a huge contribution to the sort we have today. Many of the people and politicians who he mentions in his analyzation have religious affiliations that affected the decisions and choices that they made.
Bishop could have improved on the order in which he presented his information and the organization of his thoughts. In this chapter, he tended to jump around from topic to topic which made the reader wonder how each different section, and each bit of new information related to the last. It wasn't really clear where Bishop was going to go next after making each point.