Kathryn Porter reports for PolitiChicks that Texas 7th-grader Jordan Wooley testified before the Katy Independent School District board meeting on Oct. 26, 2015, on an assignment in her reading class.
Wooley is a seventh grader at West Memorial Junior High School in the Katy Independent School District.
The assignment was to learn the difference between what the teacher classified as three types of statements or truth claims — “fact,” “opinion,” and “commonplace assertions.” The students were asked to correctly identify a list of 9 statements, including #2: “There is a God.”
“Commonplace assertions” is defined by the teacher as “something commonly stated, but untrue” and “basically a myth.”
Wooley told the school board, “Today I was given an assignment in school that questioned my faith and told me that God was not real.” According to Wooley’s testimony, her teacher told the class that anyone who answered “fact” or “opinion” for #2 was wrong. The correct answer is “commonplace assertion” because God is only a myth. She said that when a student asked if they could answer according to their beliefs, her teacher told them they would fail the assignment.
Wooley said her teacher “was taking away my religion and what I believed in” and described some of her classmates’ reactions:
- “My friend, she went home and she started crying. And she was actually supposed to come with me, but she didn’t think she could. So my friend, she turned in her paper and she had still put that God was a fact and to be true. And my teacher crossed the answer out several times, telling her that it was completely wrong.”
- “And my other friend, she got really upset, and she started arguing with the teacher and the teacher got mad. And my friend, she wound up slamming everything off of her desk because she got really aggravated with the whole issue.”
- “Another child had asked the teacher if we could try to put what we believe in on the paper and she said you can if you want to get the problem wrong which you’ll fail, you’ll fail the paper if you do.”
Wooley ended her testimony by stating, “And when I tried to talk to my teacher about it, she told me that it doesn’t have anything to do with religion because the problem was just saying that there is no God.”
When questioned by a school board member as to her school of attendance, another board member attempted to prevent the information from going on the record. He stated, “I’d rather not we have that at this point and time. You have a resolution process that we need to follow. And I think getting into these details right now would be violating your own process, would be unfair to a lot of folks, and putting her on the spot is not a good thing.”
A local news outlet called Covering Katy reported that the principal questioned Wooley the next morning, but did not invite her mother, Chantel, to the meeting.
Here’s the video of Jordan Wooley’s testimony before the school board, posted by Chantel to her Facebook page:
Here is a transcript of Jordan’s full testimony:
“Today I was given an assignment in school that questioned my faith and told me that God was not real.
Our teacher had started off saying that the assignment had been giving problems all day. And we were asked to take a poll to say whether God is fact, opinion, or a myth. And she told anyone who said that a fact or opinion was wrong and that God is only a myth.
And she started saying, telling kids that they were completely wrong and that when kids would argue she had told them that we would get in trouble.
And whenever we asked why we were led to believe that He was true if he is untrue, she told us to ask our pastors.
When I tried to argue, she told me to prove it. And I tried to reference things such as the Bible and stories that I’ve read before from people that have died and went to heaven, but have come back and told their stories.
And she told me just that both were just things that people were doing to get attention.
I know that it wasn’t just me who is affected by it. My friend, she went home and she started crying. And she was actually supposed to come with me, but she didn’t think she could. So my friend, she turned in her paper and she had still put that God was a fact and to be true. And my teacher crossed the answer out several times, telling her that it was completely wrong.
And my other friend, she got really upset, and she started arguing with the teacher and the teacher got mad. And my friend, she wound up slamming everything off of her desk because she got really aggravated with the whole issue.
And whenever my friend and I came home, we immediately told our parents about it.
And we called the principal and she said that she would handle it, but she said that the teacher had already gone home.
Another child in my class had asked the teacher if we could try to put what we believe in on the paper and she said you can if you want to get the problem wrong which you’ll fail, you’ll fail the paper if you do.
I felt that this was really wrong and I didn’t feel like this was fair for my faith and my religion to have anything to do with what I’m learning about in school.
I had known before that, I had known that our schools aren’t supposed to teach us much about religion or question anything about religion. And when I tried to talk to my teacher about it, she told me that it doesn’t have anything to do with religion because the problem was just saying that there is no God.”
Here’s contact info for the school:
Principal: Gina Cobb
West Memorial Junior High
22311 Provincial Blvd
Katy, TX 77450
Ph: 281.237.6400
Fax: 281.644.1675
To send Cobb an online email, click here.
H/t FOTM’s katrinawb
~Éowyn