MaxedOutMama
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
!!!Declaration of Independence banned
Tom Carter picked this one up. A fifth grade teacher filed suit in (where else) California, saying he was being banned from giving his students reading assignments from American history that contained references to God.
"It's a fact of American history that our founders were religious men, and to hide this fact from young fifth-graders in the name of political correctness is outrageous and shameful," said Williams' attorney, Terry Thompson.
"Williams wants to teach his students the true history of our country," he said. "There is nothing in the Establishment Clause (of the U.S. Constitution) that prohibits a teacher from showing students the Declaration of Independence."
Once I began to recover from the idea of a teacher prohibited from handing out the Declaration of Independence as a history assignment (we had to memorize a part of it in fifth grade - that was back when we rode brontosaures to school), a wee memory nudged at my brain. Hadn't I read something about parents complained about an educational course on Islam required in California? So I searched and I found this:
In many California schools, middle-school students are required to take a three-week course in which students adopt a Muslim name, wear a robe, learn the tenets of Islam and stage their own "jihad." They pray in the name of Allah and chant to Allah, according to ASSIST News Service.
A federal judge on December 10 dismissed a suit by Christian students and their parents who objected to role-playing sessions of a Byron, CA seventh-grade history class that called for students to adopt Muslim names and recite language from prayers. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton held that the activities did not amount to an unconstitutional endorsement of Islam because the purpose was educational, not religious. She noted that California law requires seventh-grade world history courses to include a unit on Islam.
Well, I suspected some exaggeration. Surely the school course wasn't having students pray in class! So I kept searching and found this, alleging some connection between the Saudi government and the textbook consultant:
A top textbook consultant shaping classroom education on Islam in American public schools recently worked for a school funded and controlled by the Saudi government, which propagates a rigidly anti-Western strain of Islam, a WorldNetDaily investigation reveals.
and
In effect, she is responsible for teaching millions of American children about Islam, experts say, while operating in relative obscurity.
WorldNetDaily has learned that up until last year Douglass taught social studies at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria, Va., which teaches Wahhabism through textbooks that condemn Jews and Christians as infidels and enemies of Islam. Her husband, Usama Amer, still teaches at the grades 2-12 school, a spokeswoman there confirmed. Both are practicing Muslims.
Do you think the fifth-grade teacher is going to win his lawsuit? I hope he cited the precedent and ruling of the Byron, CA case. Purely by coincidence, I found this blog entry about that case, ending with:
"I was an expert witness in the Byron case, and it seemed to me to be fairly clear there that the line was crossed, particularly in the workbook that was used, which asked students true/false questions that required them to affirm tenets of the Islamic faith as objective fact. But from the looks of the judge's ruling in that case and this present story, even though that program was suspended, evidently it was just the beginning."
Update: The complaint is online at the Smoking Gun.
"It's a fact of American history that our founders were religious men, and to hide this fact from young fifth-graders in the name of political correctness is outrageous and shameful," said Williams' attorney, Terry Thompson.
"Williams wants to teach his students the true history of our country," he said. "There is nothing in the Establishment Clause (of the U.S. Constitution) that prohibits a teacher from showing students the Declaration of Independence."
Once I began to recover from the idea of a teacher prohibited from handing out the Declaration of Independence as a history assignment (we had to memorize a part of it in fifth grade - that was back when we rode brontosaures to school), a wee memory nudged at my brain. Hadn't I read something about parents complained about an educational course on Islam required in California? So I searched and I found this:
In many California schools, middle-school students are required to take a three-week course in which students adopt a Muslim name, wear a robe, learn the tenets of Islam and stage their own "jihad." They pray in the name of Allah and chant to Allah, according to ASSIST News Service.
A federal judge on December 10 dismissed a suit by Christian students and their parents who objected to role-playing sessions of a Byron, CA seventh-grade history class that called for students to adopt Muslim names and recite language from prayers. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton held that the activities did not amount to an unconstitutional endorsement of Islam because the purpose was educational, not religious. She noted that California law requires seventh-grade world history courses to include a unit on Islam.
Well, I suspected some exaggeration. Surely the school course wasn't having students pray in class! So I kept searching and found this, alleging some connection between the Saudi government and the textbook consultant:
A top textbook consultant shaping classroom education on Islam in American public schools recently worked for a school funded and controlled by the Saudi government, which propagates a rigidly anti-Western strain of Islam, a WorldNetDaily investigation reveals.
and
In effect, she is responsible for teaching millions of American children about Islam, experts say, while operating in relative obscurity.
WorldNetDaily has learned that up until last year Douglass taught social studies at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria, Va., which teaches Wahhabism through textbooks that condemn Jews and Christians as infidels and enemies of Islam. Her husband, Usama Amer, still teaches at the grades 2-12 school, a spokeswoman there confirmed. Both are practicing Muslims.
Do you think the fifth-grade teacher is going to win his lawsuit? I hope he cited the precedent and ruling of the Byron, CA case. Purely by coincidence, I found this blog entry about that case, ending with:
"I was an expert witness in the Byron case, and it seemed to me to be fairly clear there that the line was crossed, particularly in the workbook that was used, which asked students true/false questions that required them to affirm tenets of the Islamic faith as objective fact. But from the looks of the judge's ruling in that case and this present story, even though that program was suspended, evidently it was just the beginning."
Update: The complaint is online at the Smoking Gun.
Comments:
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"Declaration of Independence banned"??? Hardly.
The teacher was prohibited from distributing supplemental handouts which, according to the ADF, contain "some references to God and religion."
Maybe this is unfair to this teacher; maybe it's not. It's hard to say, considering that the suit was filed right before a long holiday stretch...meaning that we have only the plaintiff's word on anything. Until you have more information --- perhaps from sources less tilted than WND --- you may want to ease up on the "banned!" hyperbole.
Happy Holidays,
YCFS
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The teacher was prohibited from distributing supplemental handouts which, according to the ADF, contain "some references to God and religion."
Maybe this is unfair to this teacher; maybe it's not. It's hard to say, considering that the suit was filed right before a long holiday stretch...meaning that we have only the plaintiff's word on anything. Until you have more information --- perhaps from sources less tilted than WND --- you may want to ease up on the "banned!" hyperbole.
Happy Holidays,
YCFS
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