Middle school students at Great Hearts Monte Vista in San Antonio were asked to weigh the "positive" and "negative" aspects of slavery for an assignment. 
 
 Great Hearts Monte Vista, a local charter school, confirmed an eighth-grade American History class was assigned a worksheet titled "The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View." The assignment was posted on social media Wednesday by a parent who asked to remain anonymous at this time. 
 
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 The post was shared with other parents at the school and has garnered growing concern from members of the community, including U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, who asked the parent to send him a copy of the assignment. 
 
 Great Hearts Texas Superintendent Aaron Kindel addressed the issue in a statement on Thursday. He said the assignment was only used at the school's Monte Vista North campus and it "was very inappropriate and entirely inconsistent" with the school's "philosophy and culture." 
 
 "To be clear, there is no debate about slavery. It is immoral and a crime against humanity," Kindel wrote in the statement. "It was a clear mistake and we sincerely apologize for the insensitive nature of this offense." 
 
 Kindel said the teacher was placed on leave while "all the facts" surrounding the issue were assessed. The textbook for the course, "Prentice Hall Classics: A History of the United States," was removed from use and will be audited. 
 
 "If we deem this textbook imprudent, we will permanently remove it and replace it with a history book that accurately reflects our values," Kindel's statement reads. 
 
 In addition, headmasters and teachers will meet with students who were assigned the worksheet to explain the "mistake" and "engage them in lessons that are more thoughtful about this period." 
 
 "We fully intend to make sure something like this does not happen again and will keep parents posted as we address this issue further," the statement said. 
 
 Congressman Joaquin Castro tweeted that the teacher had worked from a Pearson textbook, but Pearson says the worksheet is not their product. 
 
 This is absolutely unacceptable. A @GreatHeartsTX charter school in San Antonio asked students to complete a “balanced view” assignment about slavery, requiring them to list the “positive aspects” of slave life. The teacher worked from a @pearson textbook. pic.twitter.com/mzEWty68tB — Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) April 19, 2018 
 
 We agree this is unacceptable. We have investigated this and determined that this worksheet is not our product. For more information, see https://t.co/cEQ3nhcM3h https://t.co/YiGAbmzJ33 — Pearson (@pearson) April 20, 2018 
 
 AlertMe ||||| A charter school located north of downtown is apologizing to parents and students after a teacher issued an assignment to students, asking them to describe the negative and positive aspects of slavery. 
 
 This is the paper Robert Livar's 8th grade son was given to fill out in history class Wednesday at great hearts Monte Vista Charter School. 
 
 "My wife picks him up from school and as soon as they pull out of the parking lot, he showed her the assignment and was pretty distraught by having to perform such a classroom assignment, and naturally my wife was upset, sent me the photo that went viral,” said concerned parent Robert Livar. 
 
 You can see his son wrote not applicable on the side labeled "positive aspects" and wrote a long list of "negative aspects". Robert says there is no excuse for this assignment. 
 
 "The assignment itself weighing the pros and cons of slave life and slave perspective quite honestly is just gross. There are no pros to one human being owning another." 
 
 The school responded, agreeing with parents, saying there is no debate about slavery-it is "immoral and a crime against humanity" In a statement from the school's superintendent they say: "our review of the situation found this incident to be limited to one teacher at just one campus. It was a clear mistake and we sincerely apologize for the insensitive nature of this offense." The school has placed the teacher on leave while they investigate. The history book that is used in class has also been removed and may be replaced. 
 
 "This is to be able to give school administrators and staff actionable items to implement change within their organizations, to make those organizations better, so this is a learning moment not just for our student and our family, but really this is a learning moment for the school,” said Livar. 
 
 Robert along with several parents met with the school Thursday. They say the school plans to have a response to their investigation by May 9th, and will determine if the teacher involved keeps his job. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Read the full statement from Great Hearts Monte Vista: 
 
 Last evening Great Hearts was made aware that one of our teachers at the Monte Vista North campus assigned homework that was very inappropriate and entirely inconsistent with Great Hearts philosophy and culture. In the 8th grade American History class students were asked to reflect on the differing sides of slavery. To be clear, there is no debate about slavery. It is immoral and a crime against humanity. 
 
 Our review of the situation found this incident to be limited to one teacher at just one campus. It was a clear mistake and we sincerely apologize for the insensitive nature of this offense. We want to thank the parents who voiced their concern and brought this to our attention. Please know Great Hearts is taking this seriously, including placing this teacher on leave while we have time to collect all the facts. 
 
 We are removing from classrooms and will conduct an audit of the American History textbook in use, "Prentice Hall Classics: A History of the United States". If we deem this textbook imprudent, we will permanently remove it and replace it with a history book that accurately reflects our values. 
 
 Finally, the headmaster and teachers at the Monte Vista North campus will spend time with the impacted students to explain the mistake and engage them in lessons that are more thoughtful about this period of American History. 
 
 We fully intend to make sure something like this does not happen again and will keep parents posted as we address this issue further. We have scheduled a follow up communication on May 9, 2018. ||||| Updated | Following complaints from teachers, parents and state lawmakers, an assignment that asked students to list the "positive aspects" of slavery has been removed from rotation at a Texas charter school, and the teacher who assigned the project has been placed on leave. 
 
 Titled "The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View," the worksheet featured two columns, in which students were told to list the "positive aspects" and "negative aspects" of living life as a slave. The homework, assigned in an eighth-grade American history class at Great Hearts Monte Vista, was pulled from the textbook, according to the school — a claim Pearson, its manufacturer, denies. 
 
 A parent on Wednesday posted a picture of the assignment, which made its way back to state lawmakers after a report from the San Antonio Express-News. Joaquin Castro, a Texas congressman, tweeted that it was "absolutely unacceptable," tagging Pearson in the tweet. Texas State Representative Diego Bernal said he had people calling him and complaining. Parents also flooded the school's Facebook page with angry comments about the assignment. 
 
 Great Hearts Texas Superintendent Aaron Kindel said in a Thursday statement that the school would be "conducting an audit" into the circumstances that led to the assignment, and said the textbook Prentice Hall Classics: A History of the United States would be pulled from school shelves. 
 
 "Our review of the situation found this incident to be limited to one teacher at just one campus," Kindel said. "It was a clear mistake, and we sincerely apologize for the insensitive nature of this offense. We want to thank the parents who voiced their concern and brought this to our attention. We are removing the textbook from all of our Texas academies." 
 
 Kindel's statement continued, "the headmaster and teachers at the Monte Vista North campus will spend time with the impacted students to explain the mistake and engage them in lessons that are more thoughtful about this period of American History." 
 
 In a statement to Newsweek, Pearson denied that it had anything to do with the worksheet, despite the school's claims. 
 
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 "The worksheet in question was not created by, endorsed, or encouraged in any way by Pearson," the statement read. "We do not support this point of view and strongly condemn the implication that there was any positive aspect to slavery." 
 
 It's not the first time Pearson, one of the largest manufacturers of school textbooks, has been accused of racial insensitivity. In 2017, a nursing student blasted the company for including stereotypical depictions of race in its book. 
 
 “Hispanics may believe that pain is a form of punishment and that suffering must be endured if they are to enter heaven," the book said. "Jews may be vocal and demanding of assistance.” 
 
 Pearson leaders apologized in a video tweet and removed the content from its books. 
 
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 Martin Bureau/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Updated: This story has been updated with a statement from Pearson, which has since denied all involvement in the homework material. ||||| (Courtesy of Roni Dean-Burren) 
 
 Mothers of teenagers are used to getting frustrating text messages, but the one that Roni Dean-Burren received from her 15-year-old son last week wasn’t about alcohol, dating or money for the movies. 
 
 It was about history. 
 
 Her son, Coby, had sent her a photo of a colorful page in his ninth-grade McGraw-Hill World Geography textbook. In a section titled “Patterns of Immigration,” a speech bubble pointing to a U.S. map read: “The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.” 
 
 “We was real hard workers wasn’t we,” Coby retorted in a subsequent text. 
 
 The image alarmed Dean-Burren, who was an English teacher for 11 years at the Pearland, Tex., public high school that her son attends. Now a doctoral candidate in the University of Houston’s Language Arts program, she has spent much of her life thinking about the power and dangers of nuanced language. The motive behind the textbook’s choice of words seemed clear. 
 
 “This is erasure,” Dean-Burren said in an interview with The Washington Post. “This is revisionist history — retelling the story however the winners would like it told.” 
 
 In calling slaves “workers” and their move to the United States “immigration,” she noted in viral Facebook posts Wednesday and Thursday, the textbook suggests not only that her African American ancestors arrived on the continent willingly, but also that they were compensated for their labor. 
 
 In a viral Facebook post, Texas mom and former teacher Roni Dean-Burren shows her teenaged son's geography textbook, which describes enslaved Africans as "workers." (Facebook/Roni Dean-Burren) 
 
 
 
 Coby Burren is a ninth-grader at Pearland High School near Houston. (Danyeal Dean-Grays) 
 
 McGraw-Hill Education sought to redress these implied untruths in a Facebook announcement Friday. While the geography program “meets the learning objectives of the course,” the publishing company’s statement said, a close review of the content revealed that “our language in that caption did not adequately convey that Africans were both forced into migration and to labor against their will as slaves.” 
 
 “We believe we can do better,” it continues. “To communicate these facts more clearly, we will update this caption to describe the arrival of African slaves in the U.S. as a forced migration and emphasize that their work was done as slave labor.” 
 
 The changes will be made in the textbook’s digital version and included in its next run. 
 
 [Texas officials: Schools should teach that slavery was ‘side issue’ to Civil War] 
 
 While McGraw-Hill’s action came swiftly, it was after tens of thousands of people had already expressed their outrage on social media. By the time Dean-Burren received news of the company’s response, her video contemplating the textbook’s impact had garnered half a million views. 
 
 Dean-Burren has mixed feelings about the outcome. “On a surface level, ‘yay,'” she said. “I understand that McGraw-Hill is a textbook giant, so thumbs up for listening.” 
 
 On the other hand, few students use the digital version, and as her son’s textbook is brand new (copyright year 2016), another print version likely won’t come out for another ten years, Dean-Burren said. 
 
 She called on McGraw-Hill to rise to its own professed standard: “I know they can do better. They can send out a supplement. They can recall those books. Regardless of whether you’re left-leaning or right-leaning, you know that’s not really the story of slavery.” 
 
 Referencing her use of #BlackLivesMatter on Facebook, Dean-Burren added, “Minimizing slavery in any way is a way of saying those black lives, those black bodies, that black pain didn’t matter enough to give it a full description.” 
 
 The educational publisher has been criticized for its Texas materials before. McGraw-Hill was one of a handful of textbook providers that came under fire after the Texas State Board of Education adopted new standards for its social studies curriculum in 2010 — a policy that educators derided for interfering with accurate history instruction. 
 
 A Washington Post article published after the changes received preliminary approval noted that a lesson plan devised under the proposed mandate “plays down the role of Thomas Jefferson among the founding fathers, questions the separation of church and state, and claims that the U.S. government was infiltrated by Communists during the Cold War.” 
 
 While the changes were only made to books sold in Texas, some feared that the state’s large market would make the revised texts instant bestsellers, thereby encouraging other school districts to follow suit. 
 
 As recently as last year, scholars reviewing textbooks based on the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills guidelines found a number of historical misrepresentations, among them several in McGraw-Hill’s proposed textbooks. These issues included declaring that a Muslim garb hinders women’s rights, palliating the inequalities African Americans faced under Jim Crow and representing slavery as only a secondary cause of the Civil War. 
 
 [Proposed Texas textbooks are inaccurate, biased and politicized, new report finds] 
 
 Most of the textbooks found to be problematic were nevertheless approved. 
 
 Southern Methodist University history professor Edward Countryman told NPR in an interview this summer that including no more than a cursory nod to race and slavery in textbooks does students a disservice. 
 
 “It’s kind of like teaching physics and stopping at Newton without bringing in Einstein,” said Countryman, who reviewed some of the Texas books for this school year. 
 
 As it so happens, McGraw-Hill’s description of the Atlantic slave trade has had a positive educational impact on at least one student. 
 
 Shortly after the publisher’s response, Dean-Burren and her son were sitting next to each other on the couch when Coby started dialing his mother’s cell phone number. 
 
 “Why are you calling me?” she asked, confused. 
 
 He urged, “Answer your phone.” Speaking into his, Coby fulfilled a request that Dean-Burren made when her son started high school. 
 
 “Mom,” he said, “you told me to call you when I realized I could change the world.” 
 
 More from Morning Mix 
 
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 Several Gwinnett parents contacted Channel 2 Action News in outrage after their children brought home a math assignment that referenced slavery and beatings. 
 
 
 
 Christopher Braxton talked with Channel 2's Kerry Kavanaugh and said he couldn't believe it when he read his 8-year-old son's math homework Wednesday. 
 
 
 
 "It kind of blew me away," Braxton said. "Do you see what I see? Do you really see what I see? He's not answering this question." 
 
 
 
 The question was a word problem that said, "Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?" 
 
 
 
 Another math problem said, "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?" 
 
 
 
 "I was furious at that point in time," Braxton said. 
 
 
 
 "Something like that shouldn't be imbedded into a kid of the third, fourth, fifth, any grade," parent Terrance Barnett said. "I'm having to explain to my 8-year-old why slavery or slaves or beatings are in a math problem. That hurts." 
 
 
 
 Both fathers said they contacted the principal of Beaver Ridge Elementary school in Norcross. They wanted to know what the third-grade math teachers were thinking. 
 
 
 
 Kavanaugh brought that question to Gwinnett County School District officials. 
 
 
 
 "In this one, the teachers were trying to do a cross-curricular activity," district spokeswoman Sloan Roach said. 
 
 
 
 Roach explained the teachers were trying to incorporate social studies lessons into the math problems, which is something the school district encourages. But the problem with the questions is there is no historical context. 
 
 http://bcove.me/d6f46bpp 
 
 
 
 "We understand that there are concerns about these questions and we agree that these questions were not appropriate," Roach said. 
 
 
 
 "Whoever put together this paperwork and everything else, the schools and everything else, shouldn't teach it this way," said Braxton. 
 
 
 
 The parents were told the school vice principal had collected the assignment to shred them so that they didn't resurface. 
 
 
 
 Roach said there is a process in place to review questions before they are handed out to students, which didn't happen here. 
 
 
 
 Roach said the administration will work with teachers on how to develop better questions that are "meaningful and appropriate." ||||| Gahanna fifth grader Nikko Burton said he was a "slave" as part of a class lesson. 
 
 — A central Ohio school district was apologizing on Thursday after an elementary school Social Studies lesson turned into a mock slave auction. 
 
 Nikko Burton said during an American history lesson at Gahanna's Chapelfield Elementary School, the class was divided into slaves and masters, 10 Investigates' Paul Aker reported. 
 
 "I ended up being a slave," said Burton, 10. "At first I didn't care, but after people were bidding on people it kind of made me a little mad and stuff." 
 
 Burton said that the students who were playing the part of master were told to feel the students playing slaves to see if they were worth buying. 
 
 "The masters go to touch people and do all sorts of stuff," Burton said. "They got to look in your mouth and feel your legs and stuff and see if you're strong and stuff." 
 
 Burton's mother said that her son was humiliated. 
 
 She complained to Gahanna-Jefferson schools. School officials declined to comment but did issue a statement that said, in part, "As soon as the concern was brought to our attention, school officials acted promptly to speak with the parent." 
 
 "He felt degraded, he was hurt and the kids picked on him later," Aneka Burton said. "I feel like that was totally inappropriate; it was racist and it was degrading." 
 
 A district spokeswoman said the slave auction was part of state required curriculum and that it was a one-time lesson. 
 
 "I don't know how long it's been going on, but I am just shocked nobody has ever complained about it," Aneka Burton said. 
 
 While 10 Investigates was at the Burton's house, Nikko's principal called to apologize. 
 
 While the family said the apology is nice, Nikko said he is still waiting for one from his teacher. 
 
 "It was kind of mean and she should have said sorry," he said. 
 
 Watch 10TV News HD and refresh 10TV.com for additional information. 
 
 
 
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– When Roberto Livar's wife picked up their son Wednesday from Great Hearts Monte Vista charter school in San Antonio, Texas, the 8th-grader was "distraught" over an assignment in history class, Livar tells KABB. The worksheet he completed was entitled "The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View," per WMUR, with two empty columns for students to fill in: one labeled "Negative Aspects," the other "Positive Aspects" (Livar's son crammed all the cons in the former and wrote "N/A" in the latter). "What the hell is this revisionist history lesson trying to achieve here?!?," Livar wrote on Facebook, with a photo of the worksheet. "What positives??? This is unacceptable and gross." Among those in agreement: Rep. Joaquin Castro, who tweeted the assignment was "absolutely unacceptable" and noted the teacher was working from a text by publishing giant Pearson. Pearson, however, says in a statement to Newsweek the worksheet didn't come from its book, Prentice Hall Classics: A History of the United States, and that "we ... strongly condemn the implication that there was any positive aspect to slavery." On Facebook, the school addressed the matter, saying the assignment was "very inappropriate and entirely inconsistent with Great Hearts philosophy and culture." "To be clear, there is no debate about slavery," the statement added. "It is immoral and a crime against humanity." It went on to note that only this particular teacher had used the worksheet, that the teacher has been placed on leave during the fact-gathering process, and that the school would review the text and dump it if it's found to be "imprudent." A "follow-up communication" is set for May 9. (A New Jersey school held a mock slave auction.)