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If Ten Jews Were Gassed….
Imagine a math problem that asked if there were 20 jews and 10 of them were gassed, how many jews were left ?
Well in Georgia there was a math worksheet not far off that mark.
In an attempt to mix math and history the teacher chose one of the most offensive possible ways to do it, using questions like “If 8 slaves picked 56 oranges, how many oranges did each one pick”.
I do get the concept of mixing subjects but this is just idiotic (and offensive to pretty much everyone but the KKK).
3 Responses to “If Ten Jews Were Gassed….”
I’m not sure why this is offensive. Maybe you are just too sensitive!
I agree with you,Patrick. I do find it offensive — and insensitive.
Using slavery — the ugliest human rights abuse in our history — as material for math problems is just asinine.
I live in the SF bay area and have several teachers as friends, including a vice principal. He has told me some stories of really stupid things that go on. Although my gut reaction to this math test story was to simply chalk it up to ongoing racism in the South, from some of the anecdotal information I’ve heard I think its more likely we can chalk it up to there being hundreds of thousands of teachers, and somewhere in the bunch you get some morons. Just like you do in any other profession. Teachers are expected to print up a good deal of their own test material and something like this not only was bound to happen, but it has happened many times. Usually it gets caught early and hushed and corrected. But yea still, the fact someone with judgement that bad is in charge of teaching kids, lets just hope the kids were able to see for themselves how stupid it was.