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. 
 
 " 
 
 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. ||||| The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 
 
 Gwinnett County parents and activists have blasted the school district’s response following reports that students at a Norcross elementary school received a math worksheet that used examples of slavery in word problems. 
 
 School district officials said the principal at Beaver Ridge Elementary School will personally work with teachers to come up with more appropriate lessons and will offer more opportunities for staff development following the uproar created by the worksheet that included questions such as the following: “Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?” and “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?” 
 
 That didn’t go far enough for some parents at the school, where a majority of the students are minorities. They called for an apology and diversity training for the teachers and district officials. 
 
 “That’s how people learn from one another and that’s how we all grow,” said Jennifer Falk, a community activist who recently had two children graduate from Gwinnett high schools. “Intentionally or not, this was inappropriate.” 
 
 School district officials said teachers were attempting to incorporate history into their third-grade math lessons. 
 
 “Clearly, they did not do as good of a job as they should have done,” district spokeswoman Sloan Roach said. 
 
 Roach said the school’s principal, Jose DeJesus, was collecting the assignments so they wouldn’t be circulated. She said the teachers were not intentionally trying to offend the students with the questions. 
 
 “It was just a poorly written question,” Roach said. 
 
 Under district policy, the worksheet should have been reviewed before being handed out to students, but that process was not followed in this situation. District officials said they would work with math teachers to come up with more appropriate questions. 
 
 Roach said she wasn’t sure whether Beaver Ridge teachers and staffers had diversity training recently, but she said DeJesus would be open to meeting with parents who had any further questions about the assignments. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the school or district would issue an apology. 
 
 Falk said the district needed to do much more to make things right. 
 
 “I think the teachers should be reprimanded for using that poor judgment, and an apology should be made,” she said. “But the bigger question is how could something like this happen?” 
 
 Parents told Channel 2 Action News, a reporting partner of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that they were shocked that the assignment was dispersed to their children. 
 
 “It kind of blew me away,” Christopher Braxton, the father of a Beaver Ridge student, told Channel 2. “I was furious. ... Something like this shouldn’t be embedded into a kid of the third, fourth, fifth, any grade.” 
 
 The most recent accountability report for Beaver Ridge, which has an enrollment of about 1,200 students, shows that 62 percent of the students are Hispanic or Latino, 24 percent are black or African-American, and 5 percent are white, with 87 percent of the students qualifying for free or reduced lunch. The school was recently recognized as a Georgia Title I Distinguished School for achieving adequate yearly progress for six straight years. ||||| Assignment outlining guidelines for ‘$5 Date’ providing separate instructions for boys and girls is example of misogynistic lessons common in the state, critics say 
 
 A Utah high school homework assignment directing students to “go on a date” and telling girls to be “feminine and lady-like” and not to “waste” a boy’s money has caused an uproar over what some said was an example of misogynistic lessons common in the state. 
 
 The handouts from Highland high school in Salt Lake City, copies of which spread on Facebook this week, outlined guidelines for a “$5 Date” and provided separate instructions for boys and girls. 
 
 The lesson, which came from a Utah teachers’ database of assignments and has since been removed, told girls, “Don’t keep checking in the mirror combing hair,” “Don’t fish for compliments,” “Don’t criticize his driving” and “If you think you’re too fat etc, keep it to yourself.” 
 
 Jenn Oxborrow, the mother who posted the handout on Facebook, said in an interview that her 16-year-old daughter’s “financial literacy and adult roles” course has repeatedly promoted gender stereotypes and sexist material. 
 
 ‘The girls’ assignment was essentially based around how to please boys.’ Photograph: courtesy of Jenn Oxborrow 
 
 “I was horrified. It wasn’t the first time that we had seen content that was gender biased in this class. But this was over the top,” she said. “As a teacher, you have a responsibility to be inclusive and to think very carefully about the message you’re sharing.” 
 
 Her daughter, Lucy Mulligan, a junior and honors student, said she was immediately surprised by the language of the assignment and the fact that it offered different directions for girls and boys. 
 
 “I just thought it was so bizarre,” she said. “The girls’ assignment was essentially based around how to please boys.” 
 
 It wasn’t the first time that we had seen content that was gender biased in this class. But this was over the top Jenn Oxborrow 
 
 The handouts said they were offering girls suggestions “from the guys” and vice versa and told boys to “make plans for the date”, pick up the girl and pay for the meal. 
 
 The boys’ worksheet further said, “At a restaurant, say what you’re going to order so she will have a guide in ordering”, “Girls like flowers and little gifts”, “chew with your mouth closed”, “no gross noises” and “Don’t comment or be concerned with how much she is or isn’t eating”. 
 
 Highland’s principal Chris Jenson did not respond to a request for comment but told the Salt Lake Tribune that the teacher did not write the lesson and that students could spend time with a friend to complete the assignment. 
 
 Jenson declined to identify the teacher but said, “She wanted it to be a light-hearted lesson in social norms.” 
 
 Mulligan said it seemed the students had no choice but to go on a date, noting that the worksheet requires a “date’s signature”. 
 
 She said she was particularly concerned that LGBT students would feel excluded or hurt by the message of the worksheets, which assume that girls only date boys. 
 
 The assignment told boys to ‘make plans for the date’, pick up the girl and pay for the meal. Photograph: courtesy of Jenn Oxborrow 
 
 “I was thinking of kids in my class who might not identify as being straight or might not identify as any particular gender,” she said. “If you’re struggling to come out or feel comfortable in your environment and then you’re given this assignment that makes it seem like it might be unacceptable, I just think it’s encouraging pretty unfair standards.” 
 
 Oxborrow, who is the executive director of the Utah Domestic Violence Coalition, said lessons that reinforce male entitlement and gender norms can have serious consequences. She noted that the highly conservative state has high rates of domestic violence and teenage suicide. 
 
 “This can contribute to really dangerous and unhealthy relationships,” she said, adding, “It’s completely non-inclusive and completely insensitive.” 
 
 Mark Peterson, spokesman for the Utah board of education, said the assignment came from an “open source” network where teachers can upload and share lessons and that the state did not vet the material. But officials have since removed the worksheets, which were reportedly part of a “Purposes of Dating” section. 
 
 “It is inappropriate and unacceptable. It is very much is reminiscent of a textbook on dating from the 1950s or earlier,” Peterson said. 
 
 It’s unclear how widely teachers have used the assignment, but Oxborrow said it appeared the lesson has circulated since 2011. She also noted that communities outside of her district have since told her that teachers assigned the same homework for the class, which is a state-mandated course. 
 
 “They are acting like this is all taken care of because one worksheet has been modified or taken down,” she said, adding, “I’m really concerned that the content and messaging is evidence-based.” 
 
 Mulligan said she felt her frustrations with her coursework made her a minority in the class, but hoped the attention would encourage school officials to more broadly reform curricula. 
 
 “I hope it just becomes more overall inclusive for people who don’t identify as being male or female or straight,” she said. “I hope people are able to feel more comfortable in the classroom.” ||||| (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.” 
 
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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.)