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Jeffrey Green Hon American Studies 4/3/12 Parents Upset Over New Case of Math Homework Referencing Slavery Summary A 9 year old child in Clayton County, Georgia received a math homework question from a teacher that said, “A plantation owner had 100 slaves. If three-fifths of them are counted for representation, how many slaves will be counted?” The student who was African American did not want to answer the question, and he told his father. His father and 139 other parents got similar remarks from their children. The fourth grade teacher was African American and gave the assignment believing that the work would help bridge a gap of math and social studies; so that the children would learn with making connections between the subjects. Several parents told Foxnews that the question was inappropriate. The father felt it was inappropriate because he says that “Us blacks, we had to do slavery. Most of the whites, they were free and they owned us. We were treated as property.” He also believes that the teacher is not really at fault for the misunderstanding of the parents because it is common for a teacher to give an assignment to students without reading over the full assignment. The teacher was not forced to resign from their position, but was told to “read the assignments more carefully” by the parents. Relevance Slavery was certainly a shameful time in the United States’ history because upwards of 10 million slaves were imported to the colonies between 1700-1776 most being of African descent. This makes slavery a touchy subject in American history because of how embarrassing Americans are to admit that we committed such a crime. The majority of Americans also feel that the civil rights movement is a touchy subject as well, for the same reasons. This also relates to WWII because of the hatred toward African Americans in the armed forces as well as working in the war industry on the homeland. African Americans faced harsh discrimination in WWII when they were at home and on the battlefield solely because of what they used to be and what whites still believed them to be, uneducated slaves. Groups such as the Tuskegee airmen paved the way for equality and justice for African American’s, however they are faintly remembered today because after the civil rights movement and new laws, Americans view African Americans as equals today such as Barack Obama being our first partially African American president. Evaluation This article presents an interesting situation because people still feel that it is wrong to reference to African Americans as slaves. The same may not be true if the teacher were to reference something equally as destructive of another minority. The teacher has most likely done the harm in this case because the use of such a question is obviously going to be offending to some ethnicities within the public school system. Perhaps a lesson has been taught by such a broadcasted case, maybe teachers should read over assignments before the students receive them. There are no statistics on the number of documented times something like this has happened, but since every teacher makes a mistake at some point there are bound to be other documented cases of this happening. Slavery still has a legacy that brings up too many memories for those who were directly related to it and it still brings shame to some people to know that they are being discriminated against. Questions: What could have been done to help prevent such an issue with the parents? Did the media help in gaining the parents a peace of mind? Does this actually set back the American society by having a question on 4th graders homework be inappropriate for school? There are much more severe cases of discrimination in public schools than homework, why does the media focus on the homework? Is anyone to blame for this careless homework? The teacher, or the one who made the homework? <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">How would a question like this be handled at a school where there would be a white majority? <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Works Cited <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Proctor, Aungelique. "Parents Upset Over New Case of Math Homework Referencing Slavery."//MyFoxAtlanta//. N.p., 2012. Web. 3 Apr 2012. <http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpp/news/local_news/Parents-Upset-Over-New-Case-of-Math-Homework-Referencing-Slavery-20120320-pm-pk>. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Randall,. "Slave Life." //Slave trade statistics//. Race Relations 2011, 2010. Web. 3 Apr 2012. <http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/slave04.htm>. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Wikipedia contributors,. "Military History of African Americans." //Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia//. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2011. Web. 3 Apr 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_African_Americans>.