It is unsettling at times, to know that the world you live in is not alwaysone that has your best cultural interest at hand. I was trying to hold off on publishing this but I couldn’t. But just imagine, post segregation, 2007, and your child is one of 9 African American students attending a middle school in New Jersey. They come home and ask you to assist them with their home work but you cannot. Not because you are dumb but more so because are stunned and appauled.This is what happened for sme parents whoes children attened Grover Cleveland Middle School in Caldwell, NJ. Two New Jersey middle school teachers gave students a take-home project on slavery. The students, who were in the 6th grade, were asked to write a persuasive report, as if they were a plantation owner, selling the pros of slavery for running a Cotton Plantation they had inherited from their relatives.
In essence, they were given homework that was supposed to result in a media campaign in support of slavery and the use of slave labor for this imaginary plantation in South Carolina. More than 100 students participated in the assignment. It almost makes sense given that out of the 2,334 students in the district as of the 2005-06 school year, 38 were black, according to the state Department of Education.
Higher education seems to be less than high nowadays if these type of assignments are to represent getting the most out of our students. And no, this has nothing to do with political incorrectness but moreso with the fact that Amerikka was founded and has thrived on racism and will continue to do so. Why not give students an assignment asking them to maximize the killing of Jews In Auschitz? What’s the difference. Both are insensitive and have no pedagogic utility other than to add more shame to the villians that perpatrated slavery and the extermination of the jews. I say lets put instructors like these in gas chambers, maybe they will learn something. Besides, with teachers like this, no wonder we are enrolling at higher rates in prison than in college.
But what can one expect from a school that is named after the 22nd President of these United States and a staunch racist and supporter of white supremacy.
