Teacher Under Fire for Giving Students Slavery Word Problems
A NYC elementary school math teacher is in big trouble after assigning students a set of word problems that dealt with the selling and killing of slaves.
The teacher’s student teacher was disturbed by the assignment and alerted his NYU professor, who in turn alerted the media.
The teacher, Jane Youn, has apologized and says she was simply trying to fuse a slavery history lesson with math. She asked the students to create the questions, and then handed them out as homework.
Some examples of the questions that were posed were:
“One slave got whipped five times a day. How many times did he get whipped in a month (31 days)?”
“In a slave ship, there can be 3,799 slaves. One day, the slaves took over the ship. 1,897 are dead. How many slaves are alive?”
The school’s principal says she will be meeting with parents and staff to address the matter, and that “all responsible parties will undergo related training.”
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