Monday, November 9, 2009

Elementary School Slavery Lesson Gone Wrong


When sending your child off to school don't you assume they'll be educated and protected until you return to pick them up?

In Charlotte, North Carolina, when parents returned to pick their children up from school one day, many were distraught to learn what kind of activities had taken place. 

During a lesson on a Civil War tour guide, Ian Campbell who's black himself -- instructed black students to pretend too be slaves in front of their white classmates. 

Campbell, a historian of 15 years stated, "I am very enthusiastic about getting kids to think about how people did things in 1860, 1861 -- even before that period," he said.

One parent commented that Campbell, took his enthusiasm to far when picking three black children out of a group of mostly white students, to play the role of cotton picking slaves during his hands-on history lesson. 

Allegedly, the students were made to wear bags around their necks that were used to gather "pretend" cotton. Campbell simply commented, "I was trying to be historically correct not politically correct."

President Kojo Nantambu, of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg National Association for the Advancement of Colored People disagreed with the activities while stating, 


"There is a lingering pain, a lingering bitterness, a lingering insecurity and a lingering sense of inhumanity since slavery. Because that's still there, you want to be more sensitive than politically correct or historically correct."

Campbell claims that his lessons have been conducted this way in the past, and never caused such an uproar that he's receiving to date. Moreover, the tour guide made it his business to make his opponents aware, that his future tour guides will be conducted by asking volunteers instead of hand picking the participants; this way all children can be involved. 
  
2009 LA