An Ohio school superintendent has apologised for a class exercise that asked middle school students to choose from a list of racially, ethnically and religiously diverse candidates to save or leave behind if Earth were “doomed for destruction.”
The assignment presented 12 potential spaceship passengers, including “a militant African-American medical student,” “a Hispanic clergyman who is against homosexuality,” “an Asian, orphaned 12-year-old boy,” “a homosexual male professional athlete,” and a “60-year-old Jewish university administrator.”
The students were instructed to select eight to take to safety on another planet, ranking them from the most deserving to the least.
“It’s disturbing all the way around,” said Bernadette Hartman, whose son completed the assignment during an eighth-grade social studies class at Roberts Middle School in Cuyahoga Falls, a large suburb near Akron.
The assignment given to students at Roberts Middle School in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Source: SBS News
A photo of the exercise was shared widely online. The teacher used it as an “icebreaker,” the superintendent, Todd M. Nichols of the Cuyahoga Falls School District, said in a statement.
The intent was to “promote tolerance and break down stereotypes,” he said, and help fulfill the district’s goal of engaging in conversations about “diversity awareness and social justice.”
“The teacher and district offer their most sincere apologies for the offence caused by the content used in this assignment,” the statement said. “Future assignments on this topic will be more carefully selected.”
The group exercise, which was given to four seventh- and eighth-grade classes at Roberts Middle School, was not the teacher’s invention and had been used at this and other schools for some years.
Nichols said the assignment was retrieved from the Center for Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Houston, which posts diversity activities online that are geared toward college students, faculty and staff.
Niya N. Blair, the centre’s director, said on Wednesday that the exercise could help students understand their biases, both conscious and unconscious, but that it required proper guidance. Her team receives months of training before administering such exercises, she said.
“The wrap-up and the facilitation, that’s the most important part of it,” Blair said. “I think with any diversity activity, it’s important to understand the audience as well as your environment.”
It’s disturbing all the way around. Bernadette Hartman, parent
Hartman, who said her son has a learning disability, said that “no context was given” in class.
“It’s not that I was offended by the text,” she said. “I was offended that it wasn’t even explained properly to the students, which just furthers bias and tensions.”
Hartman asked her son about the exercise after discovering it amid his schoolwork early last week.
“He said, ‘Well, we had to rate who we would take — it was kind of like “Survivor,"'” she recalled. “So he honestly had no idea what the purpose of it was.”
Hartman contacted the school on Aug. 21 and received a voice mail message from the teacher in response, but she said the message only raised more questions. She tried unsuccessfully to reach the principal, she said, before deciding to post a photo of the exercise on Facebook. It caught the attention of other parents and a Cuyahoga Falls councilman, Adam Miller.
The councilman also posted the assignment on Facebook, stoking widespread outrage. He wrote that the project was “implanting prejudicial thoughts in these young impressionable minds.”
According to the latest census figures Cuyahoga Falls is more than 90 percent white. Source: Supplied
The assignment was not fostering a “culture of caring,” Miller wrote. “This is building a culture of animosity, antagonism & hostility!”
The teacher, who has taught math and social studies at the school for 15 years, will receive a “strongly worded letter” in his personnel file indicating that he “erred in judgment,” Nichols said in an interview Tuesday.
The teacher did not respond to multiple requests for comment this week.
Cuyahoga Falls is more than 90 per cent white, according to the latest census figures.
“They call it Caucasian Falls,” said Andrea Hensley, whose 12-year-old daughter completed the assignment in her math class. “I think it’s the reason the community has to address diversity in some of these subjects, because the kids don’t have the exposure unless it’s sought out.”
Her daughter identifies as gay and wasn’t upset by the exercise, she said. She said her daughter chose the gay athlete.
“I think our kids are confronted by these labels every day,” she said. “And so what are we hiding from?”
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