Posted on 02/24/2010 10:56:49 AM PST by JoeProBono
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C.- A North Carolina high school student said she was willing to sacrifice her honor roll grades to avoid writing an essay contrary to her Christian beliefs.
Tieanna Trough, a student at Gray's Creek High School in Fayetteville, said her English class was instructed to write essays on making deals with the devil as part of a curriculum studying Washington Irving's short story "The Devil and Tom Walker," WTVD-TV, Durham/Raleigh, reported Tuesday.
Trough said her faith bars her from writing about deals with the devil.
"I believe you don't write about how to sell your soul to the devil," she said.
The girl's parents said they agreed with their daughter.
"We can't allow God into the classrooms, but yet they are going to allow the devil in the classroom, that's the way I felt," said her mother, Monice McLean. "They were told if they didn't do it they would get a zero."
Trough said teachers have now given her an alternate subject for her essay, how and why money is important. She said the new essay subject is acceptable.
Good for her. It was a stupid idea for an assignment.
I admire her for following her beliefs but isn’t the point about these stories is you don’t make deals with the devil in the first place.
A lot of great literature has been based on this storyline, even the Book of Job is “deal with the devil” story.
...Obviously the NEA and DOE have already made a deal with the devil.
School prayer order 'blatantly unconstitutional' (OneNewsNow ^ | 2/24/10 | Bill Bumpas)
"A teacher, if she or he gets an email from a parent and the parent has 'God bless you' or scripture anywhere in the email, the teacher is prohibited from responding to that email without first taking out those words," Staver explains.
Homer Simpson sold his soul to the Devil (Ned Flanders) for a Donut. Marge takes on the Daniel Webster role and defends him in front of a Jury that included the 1975 Philadelphia Flyers.
I admire her principles. Good for her.
Had I been her parent, I’d have discussed with her a way to make the assignment fit her faith. If they ask a question about the devil — that’s a good way to get into the subject of God. There cannot be a devil without a God, and she may have missed an opening for working God into the classroom.
That being said, she made her stand and made her point. Her parents should be proud.
SnakeDoc
The Left never gets that lesson.
Sure, making a deal with Stalin didn't turn out well, but socialism is still a good idea.
Sure, making a deal with Castro and Che didn't turn out well, but socialism is still a good idea.
Sure, making a deal with Pol Pot didn't turn out well, but socialism is still a good idea.
Ignore the past. The NEXT deal I make with the Devil will work out just fine. See, here's how I'd do it ...
And Bart sold his to Milhouse in one of the early episodes.
Exactly, it is also a classic piece of American literature. The point not made here is that there is a school out there in the great USA that still teaches Washington Irving.
Like "Do I just shut up and do what the teacher tells me, or do I rock the boat and get a failing grade?" This kid is going to get a lesson at the college of hard knocks at an early age.
Might be a bit of an early age to learn lessons like this, but I don't see much problem with it, otherwise.
You apparently wouldn’t ever allow discussion of Aesop’s fables, Grimms fairy tales, or perhaps even Pilgrim’s Progress. You seem to not understand the purpose of allegory or the power of story telling. this young woman ( and her parents) have missed the point of the assignment. if she is so limited in her thinking that she could not have written using Biblical illustrations ( of for example Jesus being tempted by Satan) then she is not really protecting her ‘faith’. She is ignorant and chooses to stay that way
The moral of most dealing-with-the-devil stories is NOT to deal with the devil. Only a devil worshiper could object to that.
I remember when I went through my own “hyper-religious pain-in-every- teacher’s-ass” phase. It’s all about getting attention and sympathy. No better than using race for the same reasons.
LOL on the pix of the devil holding a banjo! I’ve got to show that to my banjo playing hubby.
I think this is an over reaction by this girl and mother. I hate public schools as much as the next person, but Washington Irving is an important authors of early America.
“...how and why money is important.”
I’m surprised she will do an essay on this one with the whole “money is the root of all evil” thing and all. (Intentional partial quote as my liberal sister would say it!)
author...not authors.
Beaudelaire: “The greatest weapon of the Devil is that people don’t believe in him.” (paraphrase)
Considering the fate of Tom Walker I wouldn’t think it would be hard to write an essay on the folly of dealing with the devil.
Vote Democrat.
The end.
you too huh? Got over that at about 16.
NEA = Lucifer
...and in that same episode, Bart offers to sell his soul to the devil for a Formula 1 car... which I have to admit is somewhat tempting... but...
Yep. I was horrible. I made it a point to include religious subject matter in all my papers in the hopes that a teacher would veto it, and I could scream “Persecution!”. That kind of obnoxiousness doesn’t do you, God, or Christianity any favors, as I finally realized in high school.
She and her parents are being stupid. The assignment has to do with analyzing the moral problems with both making a deal with the devil and the actual problems in making deals with the “devils” (situations, moral conflicts etc) we deal with on a daily basis. She could have written the essay on the religious and moral constraints that make this approach to life immoral and she could have presented it based on her religious beliefs. Get real! Irving’s devil was allegorical and provided moral lessons on how to avoid the pitfalls of immoral choices.
A lot of great literature has been based on this storyline, even the Book of Job is “deal with the devil” story.
Well, I would disagree on either possibility that exists of "making a deal with the devil" in the instance of Job.
There are two possibilities that could be given, and that's that it's either Job who is making a deal with the Devil -- or -- it's God who is making a deal with the Devil.
And in neither case is that true, by what the Bible says about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and what His character is, and His omniscience, and His power and His ability to know the end from the beginning.
There was no deal made with the devil there.
In fact, God gave Job a "lesson" in that He told Job (in so many words) that if Job thought he was smarter than God Himself about this and what happened, then perhaps Job should be instructing God on how to do things... LOL...
That goes through several chapters at the end of the book of Job.
God rejects entirely any "deal with the Devil" designation here, and makes it clear that God has His ways which are far beyond and above all the thinking that is possible with mankind and that it's by His power, His wisdom, His unlimited knowledge, His unlimited abilities, His being everywhere and nowhere being out of His presence, and His knowing the end from the beginning -- that He is able to do the right thing in all cases.
There is no deal with the Devil here in Job...
Thank God she is a person of color. If a white kid had objected I can guarantee you that kid would have received a “zero” as promised, been labeled a “religious zealot” and thoroughly trounced in the media and in the neighborhood.
Laudatory stance on her part, nonetheless.
Did Job make a deal with the devil — or perhaps did God make a deal with the devil?
She refuses to write about Obama?
I think the exact words from the assignment might be helpful. If she were to examine both sides, why making a deal with the devil could be good and bad, that could be a difficult position to be in. Or if the assignment asked her what type of deal she would be willing to make, etc. I can see protesting that.
Understatement. People that don't like God are not under threat of poor grades. They are instead insisting on never even hearing about God--except in contexts where religious beliefs are mocked and berrated.
This is similar to some college GURs. You tow the progressive line, or your grades suffer.
An open mind to the progressive secularist means never being exposed to any other view, and being rewarded for affirming their own view.
I remember reading this story in School.
It did NOT go against my Christian Principles at all.
It was a wonderful opportunity to share some great insights that was missed by this girl AND her parents, by protesting the assignment.
Instead, they made their Faith look avuncular and silly, like the you-know-whos that worship the moon god.
I agree.
I see a good opportunity here.
Neither God nor Job sold their soul.
Which faith, I wonder? I don't read anywhere that the students were directed to give their work a particular outcome. Couldn't she have written a story in which making a deal with the devil was, I don't know...a bad idea?
Young lady needs to learn to pick her battles.
Who sold their soul to the devil in Job?
Yep...I'm surprised the teacher didn't get hammered for teaching it. I wonder if the kid and her parents would be open to reading The Screwtape Letters or if they'd have a problem with that as well.
I live my life like there’s no tomorrow....
I did not say sold but I was referring to interaction with the Devil, in this case God and the devil.
Well...
In the "deal with the devil" stories with which I am familiar, the "deal" is clearly a quid pro quo, being the exchange of favors from the devil in exchange for a human soul. The "deal" is always made between a devil and a human. Sometimes the victim escapes through human cleverness or intellectual ability (the Devil and Daniel Webster) but more often falls to the devil's machinations (The Devil and Tom Walker).
In the Book of Job no human made a deal with the devil. There is no offer of devilish favors in exchange for a soul. Rather than the devil making a deal with a human, he makes a challenge to God: "If you allow me to do such-and-such, your servant Job will do thus-and-so," denying God's claim that Job was a righteous man. God simply accepted the challenge. The devil did his best, resulting in an epic fail. God didn't even really do anything--He speaks to Job and his companions only after the devil's failure. God is pictured as merely waiting for a predetermined outcome.
So I can't really agree with your assessment of the Book of Job as a "deal with the devil" story. I don't think you'll find one of those in the Bible.
Not really the point. If she refused because she was a Muslim, she would be issued a formal apology and the teacher and fellow classmates would be undergoing “sensitivity brainwashing” as we speak.
Also, if the teacher has assigned them a subject concerning God, she would be unemployed today, as if that would ever happen.
What the mother said about forbidding God from entering the classroom , but allowing the devil in, sounded simple-minded on the face of it, but the more you think about, the truer it is.
And that should be the crux of the matter, making an issue about that.
I suppose the Government schools would make a case that this is as far as they can go ‘right now’-—introducing the devil so as to reflect well on God, but to me that’s just the same secular dodge.
There IS something highly suspect about the assignment.
And I say that as a non-religious person.
I wonder what they would say about assigning the great Tolstoy story “God sees the truth, but waits” to these kids. A story I read at 17, and whose title and message rings in my whole being even now, decades later.
Funny, just as I was about to “post” I also remembered a required reading story when I was in highschool . “The Devil and Daniel Webster”. Now I want to read it again, to see if it confirms my feeling about this.
I knew I was going to get into trouble that is way I used the quotes. Obviously you are right but I was thinking even the Bible has stories about the devil as an active character in events interacting with people, God and Jesus.
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