Virginia School District closes over Islam worksheet

[midrange]

SpokenTruth said:

midrange said:
Overreaction, but people did have a right to complain. It was absolutely pointless to have kids write a controversial message regardless of what people think of the message. Literally, the teacher did this to impose a certain culture. If that wasn't the case, they would have chosen a non controversial message (one that the students could understand.

Leave religious topics to classes about religion.

The issue isn't the message, the issue is that it was unnecessarily controversial and forced to be written. People would have still complained about the message regardless of the topic.

1. The teacher did not do this to impost any certain culture.  It's not an assignment the teacher created.  It was part of the curriculum.

2. It's a world history/geography/religion class.  You learn about religions in all of those.  They had been covering all religions.  For part of the Islam portion, they studied caligraphy.

Both fair points, but the main issue still stands. Basically the creator of the assignment had no obligation whatsoever to make the students write a controversial statement. Whether the creator did it to impose a belief or for shits and giggles is unknown, but we do know 2 things:

1) the creator knew what they were doing.

2) the statement was bound to leave people offended and uncomfortable.

If the main intention of the assignment was caligraphy, then the intended statement could have been replaced with any other non offensive phrase/fact while still holding true to its purpose.

This isn't a freedom of religion issue, the issue was in unnecessarily yet purposefully causing people to be uncomfortable and offended.

If I am teaching a Spanish class, and I have people praising communism in spanish, you better believe that I'm going to receive backlash, and rightfully so.