Twelve-year-old Carolyn was shocked as she sat in her sixth-grade History class in a California middle school listening to the teacher tell the class, "The New Testament exaggerates a lot of things. It was written to be like an advertisement to make Christianity look good."

The teacher went on to lecture the children that the story of Jesus’ birth was changed a lot before it was written down; that Jesus didn’t know he was going to die and be resurrected; and that she didn’t think Jesus knew he was the Messiah!

As a Gateways Campus Partner, Debbie had learned that, in California, the state academic standard for sixth grade says that students are to:

"Note the origins of Christianity in the Jewish Messianic prophecies, the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as described in the New Testament, and the contribution of St. Paul the Apostle to the definition and spread of Christian beliefs (e.g., belief in the Trinity, resurrection, salvation)."

Debbie e-mailed the information to her daughter’s teacher and respectfully, yet firmly, explained her error. She wrote:

"We strongly believe and the State standard specifies that students hear the message of the New Testament, the teachings of Jesus, and the contribution of Paul accurately and respectfully. Just as we would not want Carolyn to berate a student of another faith, we expect that her teachers would not ridicule her faith by calling our sacred book ‘an advertisement’ and ‘exaggerated’ and ‘inaccurate.’"

The teacher immediately admitted that she was wrong. She apologized to Debbie, as well as to all her classes, and she promised to remove those comments from her lesson plans. (Her attacks on Christianity weren’t "off the cuff" remarks. They were a pre-planned part of her regular lectures! But, not anymore.)

"Every time I’ve done what Gateways suggests," Debbie later explained, "we’ve had a very positive response from teachers."