Math questions about killing and whipping slaves cause a stir at NYC school
NEW YORK A homework assignment that used scenarios about killing and whipping slaves to teach math to nine-year-olds has caused a stir at a Manhattan public school.
A teacher at Public School 59 in New York had asked fourth-graders to write homework questions that blended math and social studies, education officials said. The teacher then used the students' questions, including the slave-related ones, as homework for the class.
One question involved a ship with 3,799 slaves. ''One day, the slaves took over the ship. 1,897 are dead. How many slaves are alive?'' it asked.
Another question stated a slave was whipped five times a day and asked students to calculate how many times a month he was whipped.
Parents of students at the school called the lesson inappropriate and offensive. "I don't understand how teachers aren't aware that would be offensive. Why aren't they aware? Why aren't they in touch? Why aren't they concerned with these issues of minorities in America nowadays?" parent Tim Tate told CBS New York. "It's a little unnerving, a little unsettling."
"In this day and age when every body is so sensitive, when every body is so politically correct, it's probably not the best thing to do," one father said. "I don't understand why they would even say that to kids, it's sending the wrong message," another father said.
A student-teacher said she was shocked by the wording and later refused to hand out the worksheet in another class.
"I looked at the questions and was like, `Wow! This is kind of inappropriate,"' Aziza Harding told the New York Post, saying the questions contained "desensitized" violence.
"I just found it alarming that this would happen in a state that you would think was more liberal," said Harding.
The Department of Education released a statement saying the situation was "obviously unacceptable." "The chancellor spoke to the principal and she has already taken steps to ensure this does not happen again," the statement read. Two teachers are facing disciplinary action.
Principal Adele Schroeter said she's ''appalled'' and has ordered sensitivity training for the entire staff following last month's assignment, the Daily News reported Friday.
The school is 60 percent white and five percent African American, 1010 WINS' Eileen Lehpamer reported.
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Your children are about to spend a lifetime being indoctrinated into a federally sanctioned curriculum that serves no purpose other than to create a larger divide in our country.
What happened in the past is long over and will never happen again.
As for me I am devising a curriculum designed to teach my 3 children math, science and english including literature. They will be home schooled.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/21/james-a-jackson-elementary-school-slavey-math-problems_n_1370125.html
Come on people, don't buy into the hype. These people are just trying to get a reaction. Yea we know there were slaves, get over it.
You can access this article, from CBS, here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57355514/ga-school-used-slavery-analogy-to-teach-math.
It was an unacceptable method then and remains so today. Furthermore I do not believe this is the result of carelessness or cluelessness on the part of the teaching staff but is part of a creeping process to institute a rigid class hierarchy and embed it into our culture even further than it is now.
My comment to that January 2012 article follows:
"Clever and insidious. My gut feel on this is the staff there knew exactly what it was doing and was using this teaching example not so much to instruct young children in the use of simple arithmentic to solve story problems but to get them accustomed to the concept that some groups of people are better than; or more valuable than other groups of people.
Although there is a lot of resistance to the idea, even in much of the Deep South, there is a strengthening faction of folks who believe it is entirely appropriate to consider some types of other people as objects to used entirely as they see fit; consumable and disposable items.
This was a not-so-subtle attempt to indoctrinate young minds; preparing them for the eventual creation of a rigid caste system consisting of a vast number of serfs or slaves serving at the pleasure of a small number of privileged. The authors of this workbook saw this as an opportunity to test the waters by inserting some of this toxic world view in the guise of one or two math problems.
""Frankly, they were just bad questions," [spokeswoman Sloan] Roach said."
No, they were excellent questions, designed specifically to to plant the idea that some people can be devalued. Had this scheme got past the parents and Christopher Braxton, who ran with it to Atlanta's WSB-TV, there would almost certainly be more such problems inserted in the future and they would be even more blatant. And it would have spread to other courses and perhaps even to other schools....
.....As I said, clever and insidious. This was no accident nor was it a brain f@rt; this was deliberate and intentional. And I am glad it's getting the hostile reaction it deserves."
As we now see this pernicious method of hiding a barbaric and brutal practise in the guise of melding math and social studies has spread to other schools and other states.
They should DISABLE comment sections for all their stores since it changes nothing.
Sounds more to me like another case of nutcakes being given a license to teach.
Maybe we should require psychiatric evaluations before giving anybody a license to teach.!