Student refuses assignment on Devil
Granted, this is typically Mathew’s arena but I could not pass it up, being unsure that it was even on his radar out there in Australia. Every day there are countless stories of interest regarding society and culture with respect to Christian living, which I hear in my corner of the world on FamilyNet Radio (Sirius XM). Today I heard that in Hope Mills, North Carolina, there was a female student who was coerced with a failing grade on an assignment if she refused to complete it. However, she said the assignment violated her Christian beliefs.
Even though Tieanna Trough is an honour student and usually positive about school work, the report said, when she received an assignment to write a paper on making a deal with the Devil, she refused. “I believe you don’t write about how to sell your soul to the Devil,” she said.
According to CBN Newswatch, the assignment
was part of a creative writing class at Gray’s Creek High School meant to get students thinking. Students had been studying a short-story called The Devil and Tom Walker, about a miser who sold his soul to the Devil to get rich. The students were told to write an essay on how they would sell their souls to the Devil, or what trade they would make with the Devil.
When Trough refused to write the essay, she said her teacher offered her a lousy deal: either do it, or get a zero. Trough’s parents said their daughter’s rights were violated. They complained to school officials after Trough was given another assignment that still conflicted with their daughter’s beliefs.
“We can’t allow God into the classrooms, but yet we’re going to allow the Devil in the classroom? That’s the way I felt,” her mother said.
The book and its short-stories are standard curriculum material, the school principal John Gibbs said. “I don’t think it’s anything wrong. I mean, parents are going to do what they think is correct and, y’know, I respect that. We can sit down and talk about what we think is right.”
He doesn’t think it’s anything wrong? What if, in the context of English literature, the students were asked to write something about their soul with respect to God? Would the principal think something was wrong in that scenario? If engaging the creative minds of the students with respect to the Devil is okay, could God sneak into the classroom through the same backdoor entrance? Or is that the point at which we would discover a zealous display of Special Pleading?
And if a student refuses an assignment on the grounds that it violates her religious beliefs and the teacher responds by threatening to fail her on the assignment, does the principal really think there’s nothing wrong there? Really?
