"GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. - Some Gwinnett County parents are furious over a third-grade math assignment that contained multiple references to slavery."

"Once question asked, “Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?” Another question asked, “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week? Two weeks?" A third question in the assignment asked how many baskets of cotton Frederick filled."

source

Wtf? It's fox news so take it with a grain of salt, but still.........

It made me lol(at the teacher who made the questions not the kids) though, and facepalm.

Another source: here

Think the teachers were racially insensitive or what? And if so what punishment do you think this warrants if any?

Okay the question are... weird, but what's racist about it?

It says slave not black slaves or niggers, so clearly you have to be racist to interpret these questions as racist. Besides how many black slaves where called frederick?

Edit: so the questions were created as part of a history crosslesson. what's the outrage then?

The fact it's Georgia is very suggestive. That said, you're not wrong.

You have to wonder what goes through the teacher's mind when creating these questions. You have to be kind of dumb to think that parents won't notice.

Reinforcing social studies with math questions is a bit of a stretch. How does that reinforce the social studies lesson exactly? They didn't need to be paying attention in social studies class to do 56 / 8.

Punishment? A smack in the head should suffice.

Well they ain't picking cotton no more but in a test.. Well, a bit weird. But what did the slaves get? I'm still calculating..
But mostly, if they go it through it in some history class, what difference it makes if some slaves pick apples. I mean, there has been white slaves also.

So if one is black and other white, third in between, one is a special case, which one, take a guess.. Racist? How should I know but one has some kind of a card that let's you out of a jail.
but if you are white and rich you can do almost anything.. well, there are those rappers..

I just started to build you a statue.. from.. ugly things, 'cos I'm not rich. But well said.
I only didn't say a nigger word because I like to be drunk and buy games here.
Nowadays teachers have no power and they need it. I mean a classfull of assholes.. my good, they do need a good beating.

I understand your point about everything being overly politically correct these days, but I think there is something wrong with those questions. The way those questions were phrased made it seem like slavery is an acceptable and commonplace thing.

The questions could just have easily been about anything else. Those teachers must be both seriously dim and insensitive.

“Teachers were trying to do a cross-curricular activity,”

But weren't doing a very good job of it by the looks of things. Historical subjects like that require context and understanding. Slavery may indeed be an important subject (as much today as it ever was) but questions like that help nobody.

Yeah, that's pretty silly. But I think it's ultimately not anything worth getting up in arms about. Race isn't even mentioned, after all.

If that kind of questions were asked on my son's math test in 3rd grade i would be furious.

Not because of a slavery. Because that education system level is for monkeys, not for people. Questions that easy were asked in 1st grade when I was in school.

I'll cut you some slack since you're apparently not from the US, but one of the most famous slaves was in fact Frederick Douglass. He's mostly notable for having escaped slavery and being an outspoken critic of slavery.

In the US, when one uses the term slave, it's understood to represent black slaves. Which at this point is somewhat counterproductive as most slaves currently in the US aren't the same as the ones that were legally enslaved previously. It's mostly sex slaves used in brothels and in some cases people used as house slaves.

Unfortunately, that happens way more commonly than most Americans would like to admit.
We can't count on our students knowing that much when they enter to primary school system. We can't assume that they can speak English, count that high as many haven't been taught.

Additionally any system that's that demanding is at risk of leaving a lot of students behind as until about age 8 there's no guarantees that any particular student will be able to keep up with the rest of the students.

Lol, if their doing simple 8x3 or 30:5 calculations in 3rd grade, what the hell were they doing in first 2 grades? goofying around? It's better to leave some douchebags behind to repeat their classes than letting more talented student's gift to waste. Rewarding best students is always better than slowing down for dumbasses.

NOT every child is special, like George Carlin used to say ;)

And you still wonder why Asians occupy best universities in US :P

In the US Kindergarten and 1st grade are usually reserved for learning the alphabet and how to count to 10(maybe 20?) and doing simple 1 digit multiplication and addition/subtraction.....oh and naptime.

i did not know that, thanks for telling me.

Still i don't see what the uproar is about, it's a math assignment to make a crosslesson with history. clearly it's not really a stellar exaple about how crosslessons work, but i don't get why the whole nation needs to be informed that a teacher somewhere did a slightly crappy job.

Nor do i get what the parents are all upset about except of course that the lesson was stupid.