Olivia Gray says she doesn’t want Oklahoma public schools to force Christianity on her daughter, who is a sophomore at SHS

Skiatook High School sophomore, Nettie Gray, received an assignment this week that left her and her family confused and upset. On Thursday evening, her mother Olivia Gray posted about the assignment on Facebook and hundreds of comments began to roll in.

The post read, “This is one of Nettie’s assignments for World History class. It’s being called a research paper. …” and included a photo of the assignment, which contained a series of ten questions about “how the world started” and urged students to write a research paper on the topic. Among the questions were “What does it mean to be a Christian?” “Is God real” and “Is satan [sic] real?”

The problem with the assignment, said Gray, is it has leading questions centering on Christianity. The issue also corresponds with State Superintendent Ryan Walters’ mandate that public schools must teach the Bible.

According to the U.S. Constitution, public schools cannot center on one religion but must instead abide by the First Amendment, which protects students’ rights to freedom of religion.

According to its clan systems, the Osage Nation has several versions of a creation story. They tell the story of the Osage, or the Ni-U-Ko’n-Ska, Children of the Middle Waters, who came down from the stars at Wakanda’s request. The Osage float down and land in red oak trees to form three of four divisions of the Osage people, the water, land and sky. The three divisions of Osage wander the earth in search of the fourth division, called the Isolated Earth People. Once they find the fourth division, they become complete.

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