The assignment ‘takes as a given the idea that American institutions are inherently racist,’ one parent told NR.
A Massachusetts high school is accused of requiring 10th grade history students to parrot mainstream media reporting about the impact of systemic racism on George Floyd’s life without offering the students an opportunity to critically engage with the subject matter or to offer opposing perspectives.
Parents Defending Education, a nonprofit focused on combatting classroom indoctrination and activist-driven agendas in U.S. schools, reported this week about the assignment in a Concord-Carlisle High School history class. It’s the latest flash point in the ongoing battle over how students should be taught about diversity, and the history of racism and its legacy in the country.
According to course materials released by the nonprofit, the sophomore students were required to read the October Washington Post story “Born with two strikes: How systemic racism shaped Floyd’s life and hobbled his ambition.” They were then assigned to create Google slides explaining how various institutions — school, housing, health care, and prison/criminal justice — impacted Floyd’s life, and how they “serve to create or maintain racial inequality.”
The students were instructed to include “some stats or evidence that support the fact that the system or institution leads to racial inequality.” They were not directed to critique the Post’s reporting in any way, or offered an opportunity provide an alternate viewpoint or perspective.
Parents Defending Education criticized the assignment for encouraging only one viewpoint, and not providing students “an opportunity to engage the subject matter critically.” It labeled the assignment as “political indoctrination” and “promoting activism.”
Students should be required to engage with classroom materials, and offered opportunities to agree or disagree, Nicole Neily, Parents Defending Education’s president, told National Review.
“The assumption is there is systemic racism,” Neily said. “There is no entertaining or debating the merits of this. Is this true? Do you think this is a false thing? It’s just, this is what you have to think. . . . That’s lazy.”
One concerned Concord-Carlisle parent, who agreed to be quoted by National Review on a condition of anonymity, said she doesn’t disagree that schools should teach black history and the struggle for civil rights.
“But this assignment provides no context and simply offers up George Floyd as a hero and a martyr,” the parent said in an email. “Perhaps more upsetting is that it takes as a given the idea that American institutions are inherently racist and then simply asks students to look for evidence to support that position. And it does not offer students an opportunity to suggest another perspective — that America has done more than any country on earth to advance equal rights for all.”
Michael Mastrullo, the Concord-Carlisle High principal, told National Review in an email that he learned of the assignment last week and has engaged with the chair of the school’s social-studies department. He said he has “further research to do” about the assignment.
The Washington Post story was based on “an extensive review” of Floyd’s life “based on hundreds of documents and interviews with more than 150 people, including his siblings, extended family members, friends, colleagues, public officials and scholars.”
“The picture that emerges is one that underscores how systemic racism has calcified within many of America’s institutions, creating sharply disparate outcomes in housing, education, the economy, law enforcement and health care,” according to the Post.
Floyd, who was killed by Minneapolis police officers last summer and whose death led to a wave of racial-justice protests and riots nationwide, was a descendent of enslaved people and sharecroppers, the story notes. He was raised in a predominantly black Houston neighborhood, marked by white flight, under investment, and mass incarceration.
The story indicts Floyd’s underperforming public high school for leaving him unprepared for college, and it says minor criminal offenses in his life “yielded significant jail time,” and “kept him from finding work.”
The story also notes “Floyd made many mistakes of his own doing.”