Wisconsin talk show host Vicki McKenna uncovered an odious school assignment for an English class where students are told to choose who dies based on a hypothetical lifeboat situation. Some of the factors that the students are taught to ponder include the race and religion of the survivors, including a Mormon who “sympathizes with anti-black views.”
The assignment can be seen below:
#CommonCore aligned ENGLISH assignment for S.MKE HS: pick survivors on a lifeboat based on EXTERNAL factors like race pic.twitter.com/qBoemAsP4z
— Vicki Mckenna (@VickiMcKenna) October 18, 2013
Heaven forbid that students understand how to spell correctly or bother to read good literature!
Leaving aside the problematic political and racial leanings in the assignment, the assignment is complete bull. A three month old takes up basically no space in terms of the life boat. The racial aspect and political beliefs could have some actual affect on the expected outcome of the scenario, provided you start with the false assumptions that; 1. being sympathetic to anti-black views equals being a closet racist and 2. that believing different things means that you can’t survive together and get along for the time needed to wait for rescue. Also, why are all the Black people in this imaginary scenario almost completely useless in this type of situation? An artist, an almost doctor, and an electronics engineer are the last people on this list I would expect to survive on a deserted island.