What would you do if your elementary school child came home with a worksheet that had questions such as these:



--“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?”

That actually happened in Norcross, Ga., where parents complained that their third-grade children had come home with worksheets with those questions from Beaver Ridge Elementary School, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

How did that happen?

The newspaper quoted officials in Gwinnett County Public Schools as saying teachers were looking for opportunities to teach history and tried to use third grade math questions in that effort.

The paper quoted district spokeswoman Sloan Roach as saying: “Clearly, they did not do as good of a job as they should have done.”

Clearly.

Parents complained to school district officials, who responded by saying that the principal of the school — where some 60 percent of the students are Hispanic and nearly 30 are black — would help teachers come up with better questions and that there would be more professional development.

“It kind of blew me away,” Christopher Braxton, the father of a Beaver Ridge student, was quoted as saying by Channel 2. “I was furious. ... Something like this shouldn’t be embedded into a kid of the third, fourth, fifth, any grade.”

Some parents want more action, such as diversity training for teachers.

What should have happened?

Whoever came up with the questions should be yanked out of any job that deals with children.



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