Parents in the former slave-owning state of Georgia have attacked school officials after they used a maths worksheet with questions based on forced labour. The response that the principal would work with teachers to produce more appropriate lessons has been rejected by angry critics, with widespread demands for a fullsome apology and diversity training for staff.
The worksheet included such blunders as:
“Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?”
School district officials tried to brush off the gaffe on the basis that “It was just a poorly written question” and that they had tried to incorporate history into the syllabus. In a spectacular demonstration of understatement, they admitted that they “did not do as good of a job as they should have done”.
The student body at Beaver Ridge Elementary School, where the worksheets were issued, is 24% black/African-American and 62% Hispanic/Latino, and is located in what was a major slave-state before emancipation.
Racial sensitivity: American-style.
7 Comments
What is the next question?
“You are driving a bus and 20 passengers get on. Seven are black and 13 are white. At the next stop, 5 whites and 6 blacks get off, and two whites get on. What percentage of passengers are sat at the back?”
Well masser, they’d never pick nuddin masser sir cos they needs a wippin to mek em work masser sir……
ten per cent – sorry I was diverted by the first question ….
Only in America, as my American friend would say… and at that, only in the south.
Should it not be ‘how many’ rather than ‘how much’ unless there is more to the question we cannoot see.
Bad grammar AND racial insensitivity!
(and Angus Robertson made pretty much the same error yesterday in PMQs. The bad grammar, not the racism…)
Are you sure this isn’t an attempt to introduce class and race politics into any available location for precisely the OPPOSITE ideological reasons that you’d like to think they are?