FARMVILLE, N.C. – School officials at a North Carolina high school are under fire for a vocabulary lesson that references Mohammad after a video posted to Facebook accuses the district of “infiltrating our children’s minds.”

Concerned parents contacted the school district after a video was posted to Facebook by a Florida woman, Dianne Lynn Savage, on December 18 in which she reads from the lesson and assures viewers “this isn’t made up, this isn’t paranoia, this isn’t Islamophobia. This is fact.”

“Please, for the love of God, spread this video …,” she said. “This is not an email situation. This is not a phone call situation. This is an I’m going get in your face situation and I have some questions and I am going to demand some answers.

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“This is a when is the next school board meeting, and we all need to be there,” she said. “All of us.”

Savage alleges she was contacted by a parent in the school district concerned the district is focusing on Islam, but ignoring Christianity and other religions.

“When is the last time you saw your son or daughter, grandson or daughter, come home from public school with a curriculum lesson built around God, around Jesus Christ, around Budda?” Savage questioned. “When was the last time? I thought this wasn’t allowed. I thought they didn’t allow religion into schools.”

Savage posted the assignment, as well as the contact information for the school in the text of the video post, which has since been shared 44,068 times and garnered over 600 comments.

 

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The vocabulary lesson provides sentences using different works in the context of Mohammad and Islam.

The word “astute,” for example, is accompanied by the sentence, “It is entirely possible that Mohammed was an astute, or shrewd, merchant, but at about the age of forty, he gave up his career as a merchant and became a religious hermit.”

For the word “recur,” the accompanying sentence reads, “Ramadan recurs every year as the ninth month of the Muslim lunar calendar. Ramadan is remembered as the time during which Mohammed received the Koran, Islam’s holy book, from the archangel Gabriel.”

WNCT.com reports Pitt County Schools spokesman Brock Letchworth released a statement about the assignment on Friday:

“Late last night, it was brought to our attention that there were questions about a vocabulary assignment in a senior English class at Farmville Central High School. The course is designed to accompany the world literature text, which emphasizes culture in literature.

“Concerns expressed to us were related to the religious nature of sentences providing vocabulary words in context. After an investigation, we discovered that the vocabulary lesson was taken directly from a state-adopted supplemental workbook published by Holt, Reinhart, and Winston

“The workbook includes a series of weekly vocabulary lessons, and the lessons are used to teach vocabulary in context. Lessons are divided into a trio of topics including expression, civilization, and the environment. This particular lesson was pulled from the civilization section of the workbook.

“Our school system understands all concerns related to proselytizing, and there is no place for it in our instruction. However, this particular lesson was one of many the students in the class have had and will have that expose them to the various religions and how they shape cultures around the world.”

WNCT explained that the vocabulary lessons fit within several of the Common Core standards for English Language Arts.

Savage has followed up the video posts with updates on her campaign to address the vocabulary lesson, including posts with the contact information of various school and state education officials the public can call to voice their concerns.

“The principal is flippant, rude, and arrogant, and is obviously not taking any more calls regarding this,” she posted.

Several students at the school told the media they’re not impressed with the uproar.

“I don’t think it was people’s place to put it all over the internet,” senior G.I. Hood told WNCT. “There could have been a better way to go about it than to put on the internet.”

“ … It’s not anything to get overworked about,” junior Nathan Wilmot said.