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BRENTWOOD, TN —Tennessee school officials are apologizing for an eighth-grade social studies assignment that asked students to imagine their families owned slaves and what they would expect of them. A post about the assignment at Sunset Middle School, part of Williamson County Schools, prompted widespread outrage, the brother of a 13-year-old student said on social media.
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Eighth grade teachers Susan Hooper and Kim Best sent an apologetic email to parents Thursday, a day after students received the assignment, apologizing for it and telling parents students wouldn’t be graded on it.
“We have and will be apologizing to our students. It was never our intention to hurt any of our students. The assignment was insensitive, and it did not promote Sunset Middle’s goal of an inclusive environment,” they wrote. “Please accept our sincere apologies.”
Besides plantation life, slave codes and “king cotton,” the assignment also touched on topics such topics of immigrant and child labor and urban populations, according to Dan Fountain’s Twitter post.
Fountain told Yahoo Lifestyle that he posted the controversial homework assignment to get outside opinions “to make sure I wasn’t reaching or misguided in my thoughts” about it.
“Amongst many people, the general feeling of outrage and disgust was very prevalent, and that was across multiple races,” he said
Fountain told the Tennessean his sister is one of a couple of black students at the school. “It initially made me angry. …” he said. “I can’t let things like this sit around and slide.”
The Williamson County Schools student body is about 70 percent white, the newspaper said.
Fountain said he doesn’t understand what point the teachers were trying to make with the assignment.
“I don’t like the aspect that my sister is describing how she would be treated as a slave,” he told the Tennessean. “It doesn’t benefit anyone.”
Mike Looper, the district superintendent, said in a letter that the assignment was “wholly inappropriate and doesn’t reflect our district’s commitment to treat all students with respect and dignity.”
The assignment has been permanently pulled from the curriculum, Looper said.