Reason 934 to HomeSchool: Word Problems Won’t Involve Whipping Slaves

Teachers are often worse decision-makers than they are teachers. Case in point: Norcross GA schoolteachers created a cross-curriculum series of test questions that detailed whipping slaves to teach 3rd graders how to multiply and divide. And given that 40 percent of blacks fail to graduate on time, this just proves that teachers are deliberately putting pissed-off kids onto the streets with no hope for the future.

From CBS here:

Figuring out how many oranges were picked by slaves and how many beatings per day Frederick Douglass received was allowed to help teach elementary students their multiplication and division tables at one school.

On Wednesday, nine third-grade math teachers at Beaver Ridge Elementary School were attempting to do a cross-curricular activity with a book the children had read about abolitionist Frederick Douglass in their social studies class. Four of the nine classes wound up sending the assignment home with the students. But when some parents were going over the students’ homework, they became appalled at the nature and language of two questions in particular.

The first asked, “Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?” The other said, “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?”

The questions are undoubtedly racist and completely inaccurate and unnecessary. Imagine if white teachers had assigned students math problems based on beating blacks? Besides, if Frederick Douglass would pick a few more oranges he wouldn’t have to be beaten so often.