Originally published at: Elementary school unveils shockingly racist Fourth grade Civil War project | Boing Boing
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Oof… this sounds like some teachers tried to modify an in-class exercise of role-playing the sides of the conflict by putting it online. Twitter though… the worst possible choice for this. The whole world is now in that classroom looking at everything said, separately, with zero context.
Of course, maybe this exercise is a terrible idea in a classroom too. 
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I don’t agree with the outrage here. If the assignment was to write tweets from the perspective of both sides of that time period then there would certainly be views of the pro-slavery states. That’s just part of our Nation’s shameful history.
Maybe the real mistake here is not framing the assignment properly and how it was displayed to others.
If that’s the case then I can see why some were rightfully concerned. But I still chalk this up to more of a misunderstanding than a “pro-slavery art installation”.
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I think that is impossible to do on Twitter, though. It’s just a giant soup every human thought with no demarcations or context around anything.
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I believe it probably was, yes.
There are far better ways to construct this assignment.
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You are both perhaps missing that the posted board at the school included only pro-slavery messages. Either the teacher picking the messages had EXTREMELY POOR JUDGEMENT for not-a-racist or they are a racist.
There is also the possibility that EVERY STUDENT in the class was assigned a pro-slavery role and did their jobs with excellence, also see point above about the teachers judgement.
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I don’t see in the story that these hashtags were actually put on Twitter. Just pictures of the fake Tweets displayed in the hall. I could be wrong though
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Evergreen statement.
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Oh, I missed that detail. Good to know. I guess to @jlw ‘s point though… there only seems to be one side represented. The stupid, it burns.
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Every kid in the elementary school got to walk past a pro-slavery billboard created by their classmates and a teacher.
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NOBODY should be roleplaying a pro-slavery attitude, in my opinion. But that Mr. Show sketch made my morning.
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I shudder to think how that school is going to teach students about the Holocaust.
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…a racist kid from a racist family with a racist school system and racist teachers in a racist community? If we’re being real here, that’s what this is.
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Fourth graders should not be asked to think like a slave-holder. No one should but especially not children at that age. The notion of “both sides” having merit or trying to empathize with people who literally owned people is not an acceptable thing to do in schools. What is the educational value in doing that if you’re not trying to get children to empathize with slaveholders? There is no way to frame this that makes it appropriate.
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I remember a similar assignment from my own elementary (?, I was ~8 at the time, I never know which term to use.) school. We did a history project were we made a newspaper from the 30s. This being germany and children being brutally honest the paper was blatantly anti-semitic and pro-nazi, because that was how it was in that time. It’s not that we as children were anti-semitic or pro-nazi, be just wanted to make the paper extra realistic.
A lot of parents were not amused at all, my guess is for some it hit a bit too close home for comfort.
Luckily there was no internet in the early 80s.
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I guess people are finally recognizing the Civil War was about slavery…just in time to stick up for it again. 
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Well, it’s different than how my school taught the civil war, which was that it was about every damn thing except slavery, which was rarely mentioned.
Both methods appear to be garbage.
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Also, these teachers somehow are “with it” enough to make this assignment be Twitter-based, but have somehow missed all the previous (justified) outrage every time a teacher has done a “sympathize with historical evil” assignment? How can you have heard of Twitter, be in education, yet missed those? This feels like another “you deserve to be let go, either because you knew exactly what you were doing, or because you have no idea what you’re doing.”
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public pro-slavery art installation.
So just another day in the USA.
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