A 12-year-old girl’s parents were dazed after seeing the question she was expected to answer in the homework assignment she received from the school in Texas, US.
Titled ‘Making sense with the senses’, the first question in the assignment reads: “Draw a picture of yourself as a slave in the centre of the page.” The question rattled the concerned mother Tonya Jennings, who thought her child was returning with what seemed like a harmless assignment from Four Points Middle School. The Northwest Austin mother said: “There’s nothing about slavery that I would want any child, regardless of colour, to have to relive.”Her seventh-grader daughter pulled the assignment out of her backpack and showed her the last page of the 16-page packet, which had the question glaring on top. The assignment asks the kids to think of the discussions they had previously about slave life in Texas in the 1850s. Jennings thought the question was completely out of place and did not go with the packet at all. “To ask my child to put herself in a situation where she has to draw herself as a slave was an issue just, you know, all the way up the board,” she further said. A statement that a local media house received from Leander Independent School District read that a parent had raised a concern about the role of slavery in Civil War in Texas History that was being taught and that they strive to deliver lessons with care. Jennings said she drew the line at asking the students to imagine themselves as slaves. According to the Houston Chronicle, the Texas school has now agreed to discontinue the assignment.
Titled ‘Making sense with the senses’, the first question in the assignment reads: “Draw a picture of yourself as a slave in the centre of the page.” The question rattled the concerned mother Tonya Jennings, who thought her child was returning with what seemed like a harmless assignment from Four Points Middle School. The Northwest Austin mother said: “There’s nothing about slavery that I would want any child, regardless of colour, to have to relive.”Her seventh-grader daughter pulled the assignment out of her backpack and showed her the last page of the 16-page packet, which had the question glaring on top. The assignment asks the kids to think of the discussions they had previously about slave life in Texas in the 1850s. Jennings thought the question was completely out of place and did not go with the packet at all. “To ask my child to put herself in a situation where she has to draw herself as a slave was an issue just, you know, all the way up the board,” she further said. A statement that a local media house received from Leander Independent School District read that a parent had raised a concern about the role of slavery in Civil War in Texas History that was being taught and that they strive to deliver lessons with care. Jennings said she drew the line at asking the students to imagine themselves as slaves. According to the Houston Chronicle, the Texas school has now agreed to discontinue the assignment.