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They were asking about children's heroes and apparently didn't initially like this little girl's selection:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865588979/School-apologizes-and-accepts-students-original-assignment-about-God.html

That teacher is a dumbass. I'd get rid of her ASAP.

I'm only really annoyed when teacher don't accept my excuses for my homework...

To be fair, a school assignment about god is dangerous ground to be getting into. For example, what happens if the teacher gives her a bad grade on the assignment? Now they're in trouble for criticizing the child's religion and violating separation of church and state. What happens if they have a class discussion about their assignment and it starts an argument about my god vs. your god? Etc. I can sympathize with a teacher who just doesn't want to deal with that minefield and says "pick something safer to talk about".

Santa Claus and Harry Potter would have also been acceptable then.

 Peregrine wrote:
To be fair, a school assignment about god is dangerous ground to be getting into. For example, what happens if the teacher gives her a bad grade on the assignment? Now they're in trouble for criticizing the child's religion and violating separation of church and state. What happens if they have a class discussion about their assignment and it starts an argument about my god vs. your god? Etc. I can sympathize with a teacher who just doesn't want to deal with that minefield and says "pick something safer to talk about".

I mean, as a former teacher I completely disagree. It's the perfect opportunity to make it a teachable moment, especially since shes 10. So and so choose God. Do any of the rest of you go to church or synagogue or temple? Is there anyone from your religion that you'd consider an idol?

The "she didn't know what to do" excuse is one of the most pathetic cop outs that teacher could have possibly used, and then not accepting it based on those grounds was ridiculous. I'll assume all of this means she's a young teacher, but that's still no excuse. How the hell is she going to handle any real adversity?

If a teacher that teaches young even brings up religion, she is in a gak storm from everyside. Might aswell take the safe route.

I think we all know the Judeo Christian God's stance on idolatry.

"The original class assignment was for students to write about an idol of choice"

any human seeking to imitate the Most High is guilty of hubris and/ or blasphemy. Frankly, I question this child's grasp of theology.

I think she just chose an easy word to write. Three letters, one of them is a circle, and one of them is a circle and a line. Really the most complicated is the G. I mean if she was picking between that or George Washington, I can totally see her going for God.

I can't believe that anyone learning about God in Tennessee doesn't learn about Jesus. You can try to emulate Jesus, he was more or less human according to the mythology. Trying to emulate an omniscient and omnipotent creator of the universe is once again, full of blasphemy and hubris. Not to mention a lazy and fairly stupid effort.

I think the bigger point is that God doesn't make any sense in the context of the original question. Picking God as a hero makes about as much sense as picking applesauce.

There's a reason that Christianity teaches that God came to Earth in the form of Jesus, afterall.

To be fair if someone had turned in a piece of work mostly covered in purplr and green scribbles i would have rejected it anyway

lets to forget that because of the nature of Christianity in schools it is VERY likely that if this teacher had marked this work in ANY way GOOD or BAD, she would have gone through a gak load of bs

Well apparently it got 100% so i think the next bit of work i submit might have to be religious in nature...

I just want to say that I noticed how quickly this thread shifted towards tearing into the quality of the little girl's homework and understanding of theological concepts, and that I am honestly very proud of you all for it.



EDIT: not even joking. Lately it is kinda rare to be proud to be a denizen of DakkaOT, but this restores some of my faith.

What an interesting scenario,

"I just wanted every Christian to know that we have a right to be able to express ourselves," Erica Shead said to a news reporter, according to the press release. "We understand that they've taken prayer out of schools, but they cannot take God out of our children."

Aaaaaand I've lost interest.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
If a teacher that teaches young even brings up religion, she is in a gak storm from everyside. Might aswell take the safe route.

Now that is just a ridiculous stance to take on it. The question was asked "who is your idol?" Whats wrong with the girl picking God? If thats her idol, thats her idol, the school isnt teaching or preaching about God, nor the teacher, so they would be safe from any fallout because its the LITTLE GIRLS idol. She stuck to the theme of the project end of.

It really isn't a big deal, and it makes sense from the perspective of a little kid I reckon. Who's your idol? The guy who I've heard made the whole world, that's pretty amazing, better than anyone else I've learnt about in the 6 years since I started reading properly (or whenever normal kids start reading). I mean she doesn't exactly have a huge pool of candidates. Her parents, siblings, rest of family, teacher if they are nice and a fireman or something if they met one. I mean really how hard is it for someone who you heard created the world just because he could to top that lot?

plastictrees wrote:Santa Claus and Harry Potter would have also been acceptable then.

Hey!, they were supposed to write about their idols, not their favorite fictional chara.... Ohhhh I see what you did there

SilverMK2 wrote:To be fair if someone had turned in a piece of work mostly covered in purplr and green scribbles i would have rejected it anyway

Agreed, the project was to write about your idol, not blind your teacher with clashing colors!

I dunno; I read her responses. They're pretty well written for a 4th grader. Sentence structure is there, content of the responses is solid.

She's a 4th grade girl. They all like to make everything as colorful as possible.

 KingCracker wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
If a teacher that teaches young even brings up religion, she is in a gak storm from everyside. Might aswell take the safe route.

Now that is just a ridiculous stance to take on it. The question was asked "who is your idol?" Whats wrong with the girl picking God? If thats her idol, thats her idol, the school isnt teaching or preaching about God, nor the teacher, so they would be safe from any fallout because its the LITTLE GIRLS idol. She stuck to the theme of the project end of.

Nothing is wrong, but the teacher should not have to deal with religion in class. IT is a touchy subject that can end up in hurt feelings and possible lawsuits and loss of job.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Nothing is wrong, but the teacher should not have to deal with religion in class. IT is a touchy subject that can end up in hurt feelings and possible lawsuits and loss of job.

You're wrong here. It only becomes a touchy subject if a teacher pushes one or the other. Like I said, it would have been a great teachable moment for her to open it up to other kids in the class to talk about people in their religion they looked up to. It would have also been a great teachable moment to show the kids that other religions have value as well.

She's a bad, gutless teacher, IMO.

I love that her next choice was Michael Jackson

"I just wanted every Christian to know that we have a right to be able to express ourselves," Erica Shead said to a news reporter, according to the press release. "We understand that they've taken prayer out of schools, but they cannot take God out of our children."

Just like we cannot keep his believers out of children

 Bromsy wrote:
I think we all know the Judeo Christian God's stance on idolatry.

"The original class assignment was for students to write about an idol of choice"

any human seeking to imitate the Most High is guilty of hubris and/ or blasphemy. Frankly, I question this child's grasp of theology.

Thin.

The word idol has changed over the years, just as many other words have. The concept of an idol has been diluted.

While it is possible to idolize a sports star without literally bowing down and worshiping them. While some would poetically put social responses to celebrities as akin to worship, it is a world apart from it. I am sure there are extreme cases but those are more in common with envy or lust than actual idolatry.

There is a secondary definition of idolatry, which is to love anything more than God, its a tough one to avoid and even those who are devout do this all the time, God is generally ok with this so long as you keep coming back to him.

Also while on the subject of idolatry, its normally associated with 'graven images', fortunately in the context of raising up and worshiping them, because most if not all of us would sport a collection of graven images larger than all but the richest of Ancient Egyptian priests, and that includes people like me and generalgrog.

 Senden wrote:
Just like we cannot keep his believers out of children

Yes, because every Christian minister is a child molester...

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 KingCracker wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
If a teacher that teaches young even brings up religion, she is in a gak storm from everyside. Might aswell take the safe route.

Now that is just a ridiculous stance to take on it. The question was asked "who is your idol?" Whats wrong with the girl picking God? If thats her idol, thats her idol, the school isnt teaching or preaching about God, nor the teacher, so they would be safe from any fallout because its the LITTLE GIRLS idol. She stuck to the theme of the project end of.

Nothing is wrong, but the teacher should not have to deal with religion in class. IT is a touchy subject that can end up in hurt feelings and possible lawsuits and loss of job.

Its only an issue if a teacher forces it onto a student. Not bringing up religion period is an extremely stupid thing to do, and similar to schools that skirt around the issue of sex ed, only leads to trouble. You can teach ABOUT religion, you can even talk about it, you just can't tell students to follow it. In my social studies classes in high school we had several projects we had to do concerning religion as it has a huge influence on history. If you don't teach about what each religion entails, kids can grow up assuming every Muslim is a terrorist waiting to blow up the school, or that every Jew is a money grubbing backstabber.

Its when you have prayers in the school, or a school official starts strongly suggesting you go to church or follow a certain faith, that it becomes something they can get in trouble for. And since this school is in the south, I doubt any of the parents would have cared.

Maybe up in New York or California the mere mention of religion can get a teacher canned, but where I went to school learning about how different religions worked and influenced history was an important part of the curriculum, and the only people who moaned about it were ignorant rednecks who didn't want to learn about "those durn terrorists." Having a student bring it up entirely on her own should have been no problem whatsoever. If she managed to get canned because she gave the kids paper a high/low grade, that would be more of a sign of an insanely overzealous parent, not any fault of the teacher.

Agreed completely. You cant talk about or teach History at all without having to touch on religion, its impossible to do so. Religion, whether you agree with it or not, has shaped our planet as a whole.



And again Hotsauceman, The teacher doesnt have to teach about it in her class, she doesnt even need to bring it up, but completely denying a child their report simply because the child is talking about religion of ANY KIND is just pathetic and inexcusable. Shes a frigging terrible teacher IMO

Considering all the horrible things god it said to have done in the bible, I feel it's more concerning that the child is looks up to god.

The teacher in question has every right to say if someone/something is unacceptable for an assignment. I found no concrete information on what the assignment was besides a single line, but if it was implied being a person, it's gotta be a person. You can't idolize your cat/dog.

 juraigamer wrote:
but if it was implied being a person, it's gotta be a person

This line exemplifies the thorny debate that can arise. Christians claim God is three persons and that one of those persons was fully human and completely historical.

I really sympathize with the teacher here. Even without considering the kerfuffle any mention of religion in public schools is bound to generate one way or the other, I highly doubt the assignment contemplated this kind of answer.

 juraigamer wrote:
Considering all the horrible things god it said to have done in the bible, I feel it's more concerning that the child is looks up to god.

The teacher in question has every right to say if someone/something is unacceptable for an assignment. I found no concrete information on what the assignment was besides a single line, but if it was implied being a person, it's gotta be a person. You can't idolize your cat/dog.

Most Christian children do not know of God's divine assassinations (other than Noah's Ark) and have a limited understanding of the Bible, as do numerous believers, since they haven't read the Bible fully.

Again, I can see how this was going to be a problem in any circumstance. Though our RE assignment was fairly fun, someone did the South Park Jesus.