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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNorcross parents upset by slavery in school math worksheet
By David Ibata
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A math worksheet for third graders that used examples of slavery in word problems has angered some parents at a Norcross elementary school, Channel 2 Action News reports.
One word problem stated, "Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?" Another said, "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?
Such questions can evoke bitter memories in Georgia, where African Americans were enslaved for generations until the Civil War and the elimination of slavery.
"It kind of blew me away, Christopher Braxton, a parent of a child at Beaver Ridge Elementary School, told Channel 2. "I was furious.
Something like this shouldn't be embedded into a kid of the third, fourth, fifth, any grade."
more
http://www.ajc.com/news/gwinnett/norcross-parents-upset-by-1292851.html?cxtype=rss_news
MH1
(17,536 posts)Doesn't anyone review that stuff before it's given to kids?
Little Star
(17,055 posts)monmouth
(21,078 posts)Mz Pip
(27,396 posts)must be using the 1850 edition of basic math for elementary schools.
zbdent
(35,392 posts)there have been a bunch of numbers that have come along since then ...
lsewpershad
(2,620 posts)monmouth
(21,078 posts)RebelOne
(30,947 posts)That story has been on our local news, and it has left me dumbfounded that teachers would actually have that in their test questions.
treestar
(82,383 posts)Teacher is trying to stir something up.
Hassin Bin Sober
(26,243 posts)tallahasseedem
(6,716 posts)be true until I clicked on the link. This is absolutely disgusting!
JNelson6563
(28,151 posts)MedicalAdmin
(4,143 posts)JNelson6563
(28,151 posts)You know, back before the "slaves" got all uppity with their right to vote, running for office, winning the White House.....outrages like that.
Just a thought.
Julie
Broderick
(4,578 posts)that's crazy!
Tsiyu
(18,186 posts)Where 30 years ago, they could have joined rapid transit and marta, but they were afraid minorities might taint their lily white county.
The minorities moved there anyway, and now they have the worst traffic in the state.
The teacher and school using these math "examples" are racist pigs, pure and simple.
Spazito
(49,523 posts)"Officials said that under district policy, the worksheet should have been reviewed before being handed out to students, but that process was not followed in this situation. They said they would work with math teachers to come up with more appropriate questions."
If they have to "work with math teachers to come up with more appropriate questions" then they might want to consider "working with math teachers" to make it CLEAR how loathsome their racist "questions" were and enact some disciplinary measures to ensure it doesn't happen again.
ingac70
(7,947 posts)hobbit709
(41,694 posts)Stupidity that deep has to be deliberate.
alcibiades_mystery
(36,437 posts)Last edited Sat Jan 7, 2012, 02:51 PM - Edit history (1)
i.e., Frederick Douglass.
Yeesh. I guess I can see how this would be a cross-curricular exercise, but it's really poor judgment.
malaise
(267,455 posts)without batting an eyelid/ Fugging scumbags!! I hope they sue them.
Neue Regel
(221 posts)What do I win?
my2sense
(2,645 posts)racism has become. The sheets are off.
Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)Teachers were trying to do a cross-curricular activity, district spokeswoman Sloan Roach told Channel 2.
Roach acknowledged the questions gave no context for the issues they raised.
I agree that it is jarring and inept, but this wasn't caused by racism. You can see how this happened - the math teachers were told "this is what we're on now," and the math teachers just reworded some old exercise problems to include some of the current terminology listed.
But placing the problems in the present context is entirely confusing, and I doubt this approach works very well at all in math at that age. At that age, you are mostly working on acquiring and drilling basic skills, and you want anything confusing left out. If you try to provide much of the context, now you are making it into more of reading lesson.
Still, even if they had had the wits to put the questions in the past tense....
noiretextatique
(27,275 posts)really.
blueamy66
(6,795 posts)I am soooo happy that I don't have kids.
What a world we live in.....
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)I suppose if this had been embedded inside a 10 page social studies unit about some character in a story, the teachers could argue that the questions made sense as part of cross-disciplinary study, but this seems the wrong topic to try that approach with. Were they counting cargo on slave ships and keeping account books of auctions in the next handout?
They should have stuck with the "Oregon Trail" game. The kids could count how many pioneers would die of dysentery.
I think I am being sarcastic! Not sure though.
EFerrari
(163,986 posts)liberalhistorian
(20,809 posts)try to figure out how many Indians could be killed per smallpox-infected blanket soldiers deliberately handed out to them.
(Can't figure out how to get the sarcasm thingie to work, but hopefully one wouldn't be needed here!!!!)
Unbelievably disgusting unit and I question the judgment and professionalism of the "teachers." I'll have to run this by my now-retired teacher mother. She'll probably have a conniption fit over it.
ripuree
(1 post)Such racist insensitivity (in this day and age) still succeed in inflicting the covert punch that many are intended to do, long after any amount of apology is designed. So I think that those black parents have earned the right to force the school to now teach the truth about slavery's compounding impact on black and white in this country. Since it was supposed to be a math lesson, they should come up with their own examples of how money and privilege compounds over centuries. That school has inflicted an outrageous psychic injury on young children who couldn't defend themselves against a hateful system that covertly and systemically continues to indoctrinate and contaminate the minds of humans in many ways every day.
When such incidents are caught; that constitutes just a miniscule fraction of what gets downloaded successfully, to keep up its intended influence for decades and centuries to come. The sad thing is that that teacher could've been or might be black. But this is how powerless black people with supposed power still are. So that even when they're put in positions to inflict psychic harm on their own, they simply have to go along in silence, in order to keep their jobs.
So this is my suggested question: #1 "If one slaveholder had two children in 1700, and managed to obtain ten slaves who made him wealthy, and he made a Will that passed down his wealth to each succeeding generation of children, how much wealth have those original ten slaves accumulated for that family who're still continuing the family business today, which has changed names over the centuries? Obviously my example is not complete; definite numbers need to be provided for those kids to work with.
Question # 2: How much wealth would the descendants of those original slaves have today, in a system that continues to penalize and obstruct them in all kinds of ways, to ensure that slavery is continued by other names? And how much would their compounded share be today, if their rightful reparations were obtained?
Its as simple as that. Let us leave white society with their Freedom of Speech rights, while we exercise ours also. So when Politicians, Educators, and other Civil Servants continue to covertly inflict the blows of slavery on the collective psychic of black people, (especially the minds of our impressionable, already hurting youths) let us flip the script to clearly showcase for those who want to plea innocence, to understand. Yes! Let us turn those opportunities into school lessons that get entered into the curriculum and textbooks, for now and evermore. Again, let us leave white society that is still subconsciously acting from the programming that their Law Of Exclusion once had for blacks. Which is; that blacks should not benefit from the society which their labor helped to create, therefore, it was the right of every white person to enforce such an injunction in every possible way. Thus today it is psychologically enforced, by continuous psychological warfare in Churches, Schools and bodies of Government throughout the land.
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)I suspect your chapter would be heavily edited. But your questions are actually valid and pertinent.
obamanut2012
(25,869 posts)NO WAY to pass that off as a "what? Really? That was bad?"
2012.
renegade000
(2,301 posts)i'm just imagining that teacher's unit on a bit of local GA history:
"If ten Cherokee die per mile of a forced march to Oklahoma..."