After Melvindale stunt, teachers should probably ease up on the whole slave-as-a-metaphor thing

Aaron Foley | By Aaron Foley |
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on January 18, 2012 at 11:49 AM, updated January 18, 2012 at 11:50 AM

'Slave' Assignment Upsets Schoolchildren, Parents in Melvindale:

Earlier this week, news surfaced that a teacher at a Melvindale middle school asked her students to picture their lives as slaves and keep a journal about plantation life.

Never mind the fact that this sounds like a horrible retread of that awful UPN sitcom "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfieffer," but when will educators that creative teachings about sensitive issues is rarely a good idea? In response to the assignment, some parents have asked their kids to take a failing grade instead.

Melvindale Public Schools, an ever-flowing fountain of racial sensitivity, has not commented on the assignment. Fox 2 spoke with some of the kids in the class who said they were upset by the assignment.

Fox 2: "She wanted you to write a journal about your master, what he looked like and how would you escape if you were a slave," Taylan Gibson explained. How Taylan says this homework assignment made him feel was enough to break his mother's heart. "Made me embarrassed to be black," he told us.

Last week, a teacher at a school in Georgia somehow managed to incorporate slavery into math lessons.
ABC News: One math problem question read, “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?” Another asked how many baskets of cotton Frederick filled.

No one should stomp on a teacher's right to innovative instruction, but what's so wrong with just reading straight from the history book?