Tara Cali, a mom in Bakersfield, California, was furious when her seventh grader was sent home with a homework assignment that required him to learn about Islam. Instead of filling in the 5 Pillars of Islam, she wrote a note loaded with triple-underlining and six seemingly unrelated bible verses. She then snapped a pic and shared it to the Facebook page of local news station KGET-TV 17.
Mom's Angry Note About Her 7th Grader's Homework Assignment On Islam Goes Viral.
By
Michael Avery in
News
On 8th October 2015
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#1
She writes:
My son will not be part of this in any sort of way. This is bad teaching material. He will not partake. If you have a problem with it, call our lawyer...How about Christian practices? That sheet has never came [sic] home, this year or last!
She also circled a QR code that can be scanned to "hear the call to prayer from the Blue Mosque in Istanbul" and wrote "seriously?" As in, "Seriously? But those ancient melodies are hypnotic and persuasive!"
The post has since been removed from Facebook, but not before accruing nearly 40,000 likes and starting a conversation with almost 20,000 comments. See? We are having a national conversation about religious diversity. It's just taking place in a comment thread on a local news station's Facebook page. Next step: progress.
#2
One commenter noted that the textbook does, in fact, include several chapters on Christianity, and included a screenshot of their child's assignments for the year:
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#3
Just a reminder: Teaching about religions (even the ones parents are scared of) in public schools is not a violation of the separation of church and state. If a public school teacher was presenting Islam as the one true religion, rather than a historically significant civilization, that would justify underlining the word "not" three times in an angry letter. As it is, there's nothing wrong with the assignment, except that QR code. Stop pandering to seventh graders, textbook people. They're not gonna get excited about history class just 'cause they get to use their phones.
