Seventh Grade Student: Teacher Forced Her to Deny God
A seventh grader alleged that her teacher asked her to deny the existence of God.
KHOU reports that a reading teacher at West Memorial Junior High School in Katy, Texas, issued an assignment that forced student Jordan Wooley to question her faith. The assignment instructed students to take statements and label them as fact, commonplace assertion or opinion. In response to "There is a God," Jordan gave two answers.
"I said it was fact or opinion," said Jordan, to which the teacher disagreed, calling it a commonplace assertion.
Jordan said she gave the answer "based on my religion and based on what I think and believe, I do not think it was a common place [sic] assertion."
Josh Chapin of KHOU provided a picture of the assignment on Twitter.
This was part of graded assignment and #katy middle schooler says she was told she had to say God wasn't real #khou pic.twitter.com/5EQ5EnSYi7
— Josh Chapin (@JoshChapinKHOU) October 27, 2015
When Jordan later told her mother about the assignment, she was distraught.
"That a kid was literally graded against her faith in God in a classroom so who would want to be known," said Chantel Wooley.
Katy Independent School District officials and apologized for the teacher's actions, saying that the assignment was intended to encourage critical thinking but that it wasn't necessary.
Jordan Wooley "truly felt her faith was being questioned and she felt justified in defending it and I support that," said Superintendent Alton L. Frailey at a news conference, via the Associated Press. "However, the assertion that the teacher deliberately tried to force her to deny her God or threatened her God, that was not corroborated."
The district said officials conducted an investigation, however interviews with other students did not confirm Wooley's claims that teacher forced them to deny the existence of God.
"The teacher is distraught by this incident, as some commentary has gone as far as to vilify her without knowing her, her Christian faith or the context of the classroom activity," the district said. "Still, this does not excuse the fact that this ungraded activity was ill-conceived and because of that, its intent had been misconstrued."
Chantel Wooley believed the students were too young for such an assignment.
"In college but in seventh grade?" said Chantel. "Are we talking about impressionable 12- or 13-year-olds or are we talking about 24-year-olds in college who already have a firm grasp of the world around them?"
According to the superintendent, the teacher has placed herself on administrative leave.
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