FFRF sent a letter Sept. 2 to Joseph Olchefske, president of Calvert Education Services in Hunt Valley, Md., about inclusion of religious material in mandatory assignments used in public schools’ virtual (online) curricula. It was brought to FFRF’s attention by 8-year-old Florida student Emarie Wakefield and Rachel Spiller, her mother.
A complaint letter was also sent Sept. 2 to the superintendent of Lee County Schools in Fort Myers, Fla.. The school district supervises Emarie’s online instruction, which uses the Calvert curriculum, including an assignment called “Let’s Read a Poem.” One poem (actually a hymn) is titled “God be in my head” and starts “God be in my head, and in my understanding” and concludes with “God be at mine end, and at my departing.”
Other selections were misattributed and very age-inappropriate, FFRF noted, including passages from the Song of Solomon, the most notoriously erotic book of the bible with its thinly veiled allusions to oral sex such as “he feedeth among the lilies” and “his fruit was sweet to my taste.”
Superintendent Nancy Graham had told the family in correspondence that some school staff told her “separation of church and state” is not in the Constitution and is not a legal standard. FFRF noted that the Supreme Court has used the phrase to interpret the First Amendment as far back as 1878. Graham also misinterpreted the Establishment Clause. In his response, Calvert CEO Richard Rasmus denied any intent to promote religion and claimed content was chosen for its “literary, cultural, historical or other educational value.” He closed with, “We appreciate the professional manner in which you have raised your concerns.”
FFRF Staff Attorney Andrew Seidel rebutted the claim of nonreligious significance in a response to Rasmus and again decried the “shoddy scholarship,” writing, “In light of your response, we must contact the organizations that have accredited Calvert materials and provide them with copies of this letter and ask them to revisit your accreditation. Of course, if you wish to provide assurances that these four ‘poems’ will be removed, that will prove unnecessary.”
In his Sept. 25 response, Calvert CFO Todd Frager wrote, “We have removed the selections in question. We will remove the digital text immediately and we will no longer print the selections going forward. Feel free to call me with any additional comments or concerns.” FFRF is proud to announce a $1,000 student activist award to Emarie and to share what she wrote about her experience:
My Little Voice
By Emarie Wakefield
(with help from Mom)
When I was interviewed by the local news station about my objection to prayers (as well as bible passages and misauthored prayers being passed off as “poems”) in my public virtual school’s curriculum, many people had a lot to say against me. Many people said I wasn’t old enough to have a voice, an opinion or freedom. I’m little, so I’m just learning about history, but so far I haven’t found an age limit on freedoms.
Lincoln didn’t say “conceived in liberty for those who are over school-aged.” I know this. I had to recite the opening to the Gettysburg Address. The First Amendment isn’t only for grown-ups.
I live and grow in a humanist home. I’m taught every day that my little voice makes a big difference. I know that some people are told they are too little to speak up, but in my home I’m taught that when I see something wrong, it’s my job to speak out loud to change that.
I’m proud of my freedom as an American. Since I do not believe that there is some being in control of everything, I know that it’s going to be me that has to do the work to get things done. It’s the job of all of us. We have to work together as a big team to make this planet a better, kinder and happier place to live. No one is going to magically fix it for us.
If I had just stayed quiet and “did the homework I was told to do,” then what about the children that came after me that weren’t told that freedom belongs to them, too? Others can do as they are told when their freedoms are being taken from them, but as for me and my little voice, we’re off to big places.
When a lot of those little voices come together, it gets too loud to ignore. Humanity, come with me. Let’s do big, wonderful things, because even a little voice is equal under our laws. That’s a self-evident truth.
I have so much gratitude to the Freedom From Religion Foundation for this scholarship, because education makes little voices louder.
Rachel Spiller writes:
This is incredible news! We are elated! We did, however, eventually remove Emarie from the Lee County School system. It became more and more apparent every day that no one was actually reviewing the materials that were being passed on to our children in the Lee virtual program.
Every day there were serious “mistakes” in their online testing and otherwise that made us realize that to leave her in this curriculum would be disregarding our parental responsibilities. We are currently doing home education while we assess our options. You’d be surprised at what Emarie endured during the press coverage of this. Of course there were “trolls” that even went so far as to say that they hoped she died, but there were many amazing strangers that encouraged her. One such example was Jonathan Mann, a musician well-known for turning Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Hobby Lobby dissent into a song. He wrote a song called “Ignore the Trolls” for her, and the blog SheKnows also did a wonderful piece. Please feel free to point to a Facebook “public figure” page that we administer for Emarie: facebook.com/EmmieOutLoud/. We started the page because she hoped to encourage other young people to become involved in volunteerism. (Her nickname is Emmie, and she chose “OutLoud” after a Coco Chanel quote: “The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”)
Emarie is also outspoken on LGBT rights and volunteers by my side at the LGBT community center in our area (pridecenterswfl.com/), where she sometimes leads anti-bullying youth rallies.
Emarie is also involved with a charity called “Pushing Daizies” that raises money to send low-income children to art and music camp. She also participated in the “No One Else Can Play Your Part” campaign for World Suicide Prevention Day.
Her first taste of activism was when she, by her own choice and will, decided to march with the Occupy movement in Birmingham, Ala., when she was 5. She woke me that morning and told me we had to go to the march or ”the people with all the money and resources will win.”
It was a long march on those tiny little legs, but she did not complain a single time. She can still lead the Occupy callback chant to this day and is proud to have taken a place in democracy.
