Teachers work hard to make content relevant to the students. They like to connect what students are learning in the classroom with what is happening in the real world. However, one parent says that his son’s teacher crossed the line.
Dad, Scott Radies, said his son’s Social Studies teacher assigned homework that was too biased, especially for middle schoolers. Teacher, Grace Davis, in Wisconsin, created a worksheet for students to respond to a political cartoon. She asked questions that Radies said were beyond appropriate.
The cartoon was originally printed in the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Here is the cartoon:
The teacher asked these questions and also the boy’s answers. He made a 100 on the assignment.
- Who are the men in the picture (What is their job? Look at what they are doing for a hint) Their job is to build/destroy the pathway to citizenship.
- What are they building? The path to citizenship.
- What do the symbols on their shirts represent? Republican and Democrat.
- What is action being done by each man? The Democrat is building; the Republican is destroying.
- What might this mean to us about immigration and citizenship? That Democrats want immigrants to come in and Republicans don’t.
Radies said he wanted to see if there was equal representation. “I flipped it over to see if the opposite view was maybe on the other side of the homework assignment, but there’s nothing, just one side of paper.”
“When I saw his answers to the questions, and realized that the teacher gave him five out of five so apparently those answers that he gave were the ones she was looking for because he got them all right … The fact that the way that she structured the questions and then rewarded them with five out of five, I thought ‘Wow, it definitely looks like she wanted a certain answer …’ The whole thing was ridiculous, I thought.”
Honestly, I’m not sure what the dad was so flustered about. If the teacher was consistently taking the Democrats’ side of politics in every assignment that would be reason to panic. Maybe next time she’ll use a cartoon that leans right.
Dad, Radies, said he asked the teacher about the assignment, saying, “Some of the things that my son has been hearing in your class, it doesn’t seem like you’re giving the other view.” She responded to him, “Well, the semesters not over.”
What do you think, biased or just an assignment?
