The decision came after students were asked in a homework assignment to copy the Shahada, or Muslim statement of faith, as a calligraphy practice. (One of the videos called it a voluntary assignment but I can’t find anything more about that).
I’m not in favor of having any kind of religious declaration of faiths like this in a public school, but is this really what we’ve come to in our country? Freaking out enough that it prompted the schools to close?
This is beyond disturbing IMO.
They were copying the religious declaration of faith in Arabic. And these students, I’m assuming, don’t know Arabic. It’s not like they were asserting that they were Muslims. They were just drawing. This is beyond stupid.
If I quote the Nicene creed, that doesn’t make me a Christian.
This country has gone past hysteria.
There are so many layers of stupidity involved in this I cannot wrap my head around it! What kind of educational value does copying a piece of calligraphy (religious or not) have? If it is a geography lesson, do not waste the students’ time on artsy busywork. It is assignment of homework for the sake of assigning homework…
They could simply have had the students write in English "Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Calligraphy doesn’t need to be in Arabic. They could teach them about the artistic beauty of calligraphy using ANY phrase if they want to teach about the artistic value of writing religious phrases. Oh, wait, this is GEOGRAPHY CLASS. Funny, I learned calligraphy in ART CLASS. Go figure. Silly me and my silly school.
There is no indication of whether the school system felt threatened by parents, or closed because of some sort of terrorist threat. Los Angeles shut down their school system for 640,000 students, because of a fake and unverified email threat.
However, I can’t imagine the abject stupidity involved in assigning kids to write out such a statement of importance to Muslims. Important enough, that just reciting it one time in front of witnesses is the first and only formal step in conversion to Islam. Now I am not religious at all, but I can certainly see the offense in assigning students to write out a statement of faith to another religion, that might be considered rejecting their own religion. Just because it was in another language doesn’t make it okay. Could you imagine if a teacher assigned students in a Muslim country to write out a statement of faith from the Bible, rejecting their Islamic faith? Heads might roll, literally.
FYI-calligraphy is not drawing. It is writing.
Again, I do object to the religious part of it but it’s the fact that the school district felt threatened enough to close down that makes me sick.
I am an atheist. I wouldn’t like my kids being assigned anything of the sort, but that’s a different matter from what happened here IMO.
“Again, I do object to the religious part of it but it’s the fact that the school district felt threatened enough to close down that makes me sick.”
If this makes you sick, then the threats towards the LA school system that shut down all those schools in LA must have made you ill enough to go to the hospital!
this assignment sounds like cultural appropriation to me
I agree completely with @BunsenBurner. The fact that they were assigned calligraphy homework in a geography class is absurd.
Will they have the boys practice “serving tea”? You know, to experience the culture?
Calligraphy is writing, but the students didn’t know how to write Arabic. They were drawing.
Whether art class or geography class the assignment was inappropriate. I would like to know why anyone thought they could get away with it. The fact that they are now compelled to close school for the day bothers me not in the least.
Hopefully this might be a lesson to other schools.
Get away with WHAT? Get away with poor pedagogy? I do hope schools are not closed because of poor choice in lessons, because then they’d never be open.
If you don’t speak French and you write a phrase in French, you’re writing. You could write the phrase with a pencil, a ballpoint pen, a calligraphy nib, or a crayon. It’s writing no matter how much you want it to be drawing to support your position.
I think Sylvan means getting away with something along these lines: http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/islam08.socst.world.glob.lppillars/the-five-pillars-of-islam/
There’s an agenda at work and the scary part is that this particular school system was trying to disguise teaching Islam as an art project.
Calligraphy in our school was an art class.
As to the subject matter, seems like a microaggression to me. 
I wonder if it was s school system lesson? Or a choice by an individual teacher.
This is about as appropriate as a teacher assigning the students to draw Mohammed in a math class.
Seriously, baseballmom? You think an entire school system in Virginia was secretly trying to convert students to Islam? Hey, I know of a conspiracy theorist SandyHook denier professor in Florida you might want to meet. /sarcasm.