Students at a Texas charter school recently received a homework assignment that asked them to list both the “positive aspects” and the “negative aspects” of slavery.
Eighth-grade students at Great Hearts Monte Vista Charter School in San Antonio were given a worksheet titled, “The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View.” A mother posted the worksheet to social media with the only appropriate answer:
The teacher of the class said she was only teaching from a textbook: Prentice Hall Classics: A History of the United States, but after an outcry from parents, the book was removed while the school district conducts an investigation. I looked in Great Heart’s school manual and “investigation” is defined as:
A bullshit tactic used to stall people until their low attention spans force them to forget why they are angry.
Meanwhile, the school’s superintendent issued the following statement on Facebook:
While there is no way anyone can list the positive aspects of slavery, as a certified wypipologist, I can provide an answer if this is ever posed as a short-answer question on an assignment:
Slavemasters often forbade enslaved persons from becoming literate. While this seems terrible, there is one positive aspect:
They didn’t have to put up with reading white people’s bullshit.