A 5th grade class erupted in controversy after an insensitive assignment about slavery.
The slave trade is an extremely dark and horrific part of American history. It's impossible to talk about the history of our country without it, but it's also difficult to talk about with the right level of sensitivity, respect, nuance, and context. Millions of people died directly because of the Atlantic slave trade, which is to say nothing of the inhumane cruelty that the survivors of enslavement suffered.
How do you explain something so unimaginably awful to children? No one would ever say it's easy, but outdated curriculums and even insensitive teachers have been bungling it for decades. Poorly thought-out slavery lessons have been a problem in American schools for a long time now.
In an effort to help kids make sense of something so truly senseless, assignments often try to put kids in the shoes of slave owners and ask that they understand the reasons and logic behind the practice. This is the wrong lesson, and stories like this one show exactly why.
In 2019, 5th grade students at Blades Elementary School were given an assignment on the trading market of early Colonial settlers. One of the questions was completely outrageous.
According to a photo posted on Facebook by Lee Hart, the assignment read:
"You own a plantation or farm and therefore need more workers. You begin to get involved in the slave trade industry and have slaves work on your farm. Your product to trade is slaves.
"Set your price for a slave," it continued, offering a blank space for children to write in their answer. "These could be worth a lot. You may trade for any items you'd like."
The post went viral in local Facebook groups at the time, quickly attracting media attention and outrage among fellow parents.
"Unimaginable that a teacher would think this way okay," one commenter wrote.
"How stupid, insensitive, racial, unbelievable in today’s world. The teacher needs to be penalized for this," someone said.
"Any teacher, as we approach 2020, should be educated and sensitive enough to know that there are better examples that could be used to teach this lesson, which would not make anyone uncomfortable," another user added.
See the assignment here. It's hard to believe without seeing it with your own eyes.
Lee Hart www.facebook.com
You can see immediately where the assignment went wrong. Instead of teaching about the horrors of enslaving another human being, we're building empathy for the poor slave owners who just need someone to work their land so they can get by. While the context of how the early trade-based economy worked is important for children to learn, how we talk about it is even more important.
Can you imagine an assignment that prompted children to put themselves in the Nazi's shoes during the Holocaust? Exactly.
Assignments like this one have been going home with students for years. This is just one of the latest examples and, somehow, incidents like this one are still happening.
Parents of the 5th grade students were outraged.Canva Photos
In another school, children were asked to share the pros and cons of slavery, including giving at least three "good" reasons for it. In another incident, kids were asked to write fake Tweets from the perspective of slave owners, and the Tweets were printed and posted in the school's hallway with jaw-dropping hashtags like #slaveryforlife. In yet another assignment, middle school students were asked to brainstorm punishments for slaves in ancient Mesopotamia.
Some powerful parties in America don't want schools teaching the real, ugly truth of how our country was founded, and that's undeniably making this problem worse. The 1776 Commission was launched in 2020 by then-President Donald Trump and was re-commissioned again in January of 2025. It pushes for what it calls "patriotic education." You can guess what that means.
The official report is full of hemming and hawing and explaining away of the atrocities of slavery, harping on why the practice was a necessary evil.
"Many Americans labor under the illusion that slavery was somehow a uniquely American evil," the report says.
It argues that, because other countries did slavery first, that it wasn't so bad that America partook in the cruel practice. It also bends over backwards to applaud the founding fathers for half-measures and minor compromises, like George Washington freeing his own slaves shortly before his death in 1799.
The federal government doesn't control the minutiae of state curriculums, but can withhold public school funding when it's not happy about what's being taught or how the money is being used. PBS writes that over 20 states have passed laws that "restrict how history can be taught in public schools" in the last 10 years or so.
The classroom is supposed to be a safe space for all students. Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash
For the school's part, the principal of Blades Elementary at the time apologized for the incident and the teacher was placed on administrative leave after expressing their remorse.
"Asking a student to participate in a simulated activity that puts a price on a person is not acceptable," Superintendent Chris Gaines said according to ABC News. "Racism of any kind, even inadvertently stemming from cultural bias, is wrong and is not who we aspire to be as a school district."
Being a teacher is hard, especially with immense pressure coming from the very top to speak of American history in only pre-approved, white-washed ways. But we've definitely got to do better than this.
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