A first-grade teacher at an Indiana elementary school had to be officially corrected after she sent a letter home to parents asking them to encourage their children not to mention God in class.
Fox59 is reporting on the incident which occurred at McCordsville Elementary School in McCordsville, Indiana. Parents of first-graders at the school received a letter from the teacher citing inappropriate “school language” being used in the classroom. But she wasn’t talking about curse words – she was talking about students mentioning the name of Jesus in class.
“I have had a group of about five students using the words God, Jesus and Devil in conversation,” the teacher wrote. “The first time I had a talk about it with them, unfortunately, on a different day the conversation came up again. With McCordsville Elementary being a public school, we have many different religions and beliefs, and I do not want to upset a child/parent because of these words being used. If you go to church or discuss these things at home, please have a talk with your child about there being an appropriate time and place of talking about it.”
As Todd Starnes of FoxNews.com reports, one of the parents was outraged enough to send the letter to a local Fox News station.
“ . . . [A]nd faster than you could say, ‘God bless America,’ the school district backtracked.”
Dr. Shane Robbins, Superintendent of the Mt. Vernon Community School Corporation, quickly issued a statement addressing the “unfortunate incident.”
“Trying to limit a student’s view on religion is a violation of a student’s first amendment rights. However, if the discussion becomes an academic disruption, then as a district, we can intervene to maintain the integrity of the educational process while at the same time being sure to not violate a student’s constitutional rights,” he informed.
Rather than allow innocent first-graders to be taught that religion is not something that should be mentioned in public, parents took a stand and in the process, a terrible wrong was made right.
Kudos to these brave Christian soldiers!