Extracurricular activities on Thursday and on the weekend were also cancelled for the district’s approximately 10,000 students.
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A school district in the United States cancelled classes and a holiday concert after being flooded with angry messages over a school calligraphy lesson that involved copying the Shahada – a Muslim statement of faith in Arabic.
Cheryl LaPorte, a world geography teacher at Riverheads High School, assigned her students homework using a standard workbook on world religions that asked students to copy religious calligraphy.
Although “there has been no specific threat of harm”, Bond and Augusta County Sheriff Randall Fisher decided it would be best to close the schools.
“They started becoming very threatening, very profane, ” he said.
“I do not trust her to teach my son and regardless of the outcome he will not sit in her classroom”, Kimberly Herndon said in a Facebook post.
It translated to:”There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is the messenger of Allah”. The teacher’s lesson was reportedly drawn from instructional material that also included Judeo-Christian assignments. The work sheet distributed to students on December 11 said: “This should give you an idea of the artistic complexity of calligraphy”.
The assignment immediately drew ire from some parents who called for LaPorte’s firing for “violating children’s religious beliefs”, reported The News Leader, a local newspaper.
“I think people are making a big deal about it for no reason at all”, said 18-year-old Hannah Carey, a former student of LaPorte who lives in Waynesboro.
School officials said the aim of the lesson was to illustrate the complexity of the written Arabic language, not to promote any religious system, and a different sample text will be used in the future.
Some pupils refused the assignment and parents accused the teacher of indoctrination.
The school district statement said: “We regret having to take this action, but we are doing so based on the recommendations of law enforcement and the Augusta County School Board out of an abundance of caution”.
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A student from the same school opened a group in Facebook to extend support to Cherly LaPorte, to condemn the backlash and to send out a message that there is nothing wrong about learning new things.
