A Georgia school insisted today there was no “maliciousness” intended when a third grade math quiz asked students to compute the number of beatings a slave got a week and to calculate how many baskets of cotton he picked.
But the Gwinnett County School District has launched an investigation to determine how the offending questions made it onto the students’ homework sheets.
The math homework assignment was given to more than 100 students at Beaver Ridge Elementary school in Norcross, Ga., as part of a social studies lesson, Gwinnett County school officials said. The assignment outraged parents, community activists and members of the Georgia NAACP.
Sloan Roach, a Gwinnett County school district spokeswoman, told ABCNews.com that the students were studying famous Americans and as an attempt to create a cross-curricular worksheet, one teacher used Frederick Douglass and slavery beatings for two of the questions.
Although only one teacher wrote out the controversial questions, another teacher made copies of the assignment and it was distributed to four out of nine third grade classes at Beaver Ridge, Roach said. The school is not publicly naming any of the teachers who are suspected to be involved.
Somebody should be fired for this mess. Seriously, this is NOT okay.
3 comments:
Just do the math indeed. Look at what State this comes from.
It would be hard to get angry over this I wasn't around back then. Since none of the students walked out of the class room I feel this isn't a big deal.
If I was one of the students, I would have put this teacher in his/her place by inserting the word "white" in front of the word "slave" on my test sheet.
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