Parents are irate with the Beaver Ridge Elementary School in Norcross, Georgia. It has been reported that students were given math worksheets that had problems containing examples of slavery in them. The word problems on the worksheets have references to slavery and beatings.
Two of the problem examples include:
“Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?”
“If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?”
The wording of the problems is not the only reason criticism has fallen on the school. The other reason is the way that the issue is being handled. It has been said by district officials that the principal for the elementary school is going “work with teachers to come up with more appropriate lessons.”
Sloan Roach, a spokesperson for the district, said that the teachers were hoping to incorporate social studies lessons within the math problems as part of ‘cross-curricular’ activities. Roach also said that even though the questions were inappropriate, she does not feel that the teachers were trying to harm the students with the questions.
“This is simply a case of creating a bad question,” Roach said.
One parent, Terrance Barnett, said that explaining the question to his child was painful.
“Something like shouldn’t be imbedded into a kid of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, any grade,” Barnett said. “I’m having to explain to my 8-year-old why slavery or slaves or beatings are in a math problem. That hurts.”