2012 Victories: Little Girl can say “God” in School Poem

This is the latest installment in a year-end series looking back at a few of the hundreds of victories by the ACLJ in 2012.

Imagine your son or daughter is given an assignment in his or her second grade class, just like thousands of other students around the country, to write a short poem. Your young child decides to write a poem that mentions their love for God, yet their teacher scolds them.

That is exactly what happened to one little girl when she wrote, “Love is the earth that God made,” in a poem for school. Her teacher not only crossed out that entire line, but reprimanded the little girl, telling her that discussion of God is not allowed in class.

The ACLJ worked with this little girl’s father who spoke with the school’s principal. As it turns out, the teacher was just uninformed about the law, that the religious liberty of students is protected by the Constitution. Unfortunately, this misinformation is all too often the result of the coordinated efforts of those who want to remove all reference to God or religion from our society. We will continue to work with students, parents, teachers, and school administrators to ensure that religious liberty is protected in the classroom.

To help the ACLJ continue to have the resources we need to make these victories possible and continue these fights, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the ACLJ through our year-end Matching Challenge. Your gift will be matched dollar-for-dollar though the end of the year.

You can read more in the ACLJ’s 2012 Victories series here.