A lot of people were outraged over a math assignment given at a school district in Missouri. Social media users shared posts of a math problem that referenced author and poet Maya Angelou’s sexual abuse and sex work.
“CRAP BEING TAUGHT (TO) OUR KIDS – SICK!” a Facebook user posted on April 18. It was eventually shared more than 250 times in just two days. The original post emerged on Twitter back in February 2021.
Other versions of the image garnered thousands of additional shares across Facebook and Twitter, USA Today reported.
The first question given to students asked them to fill in the blank to the following: “Angelou was sexually abused by her mother’s ______ at age 8, which shaped her career choices and motivation for writing.” The second says, “Trying to support her son as a single mother, she worked as a pimp, prostitute, and ______.”
https://twitter.com/CMartinForMO/status/1496299800588865542?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1496299800588865542%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fsupercopyeditors.com%2Fblog%2Fwriting%2Fmath-homework-question-goes-viral%2F
Some may have thought it was a fake assignment, but it was a real one that was given to high schoolers in the Lincoln County R-III School District in Missouri.
There were additional questions about Angelou’s hometown her professional career at Wake Forest University, as well as other topics.
About 60 ninth grade students received the assignment for the week of Feb. 14-18, the district’s community relations director, Audrey Henebry, confirmed in an email to USA TODAY.
The assignment came from teacherspayteachers.com, which is a website that allows adulatory across the globe to buy and sell materials for each other.
Apparently, the intent for the assignment was to “provide cross-curricular content,” Henebry added.
Henebry confirmed that Kelly Briscoe, principal of the Ninth Grade Center, contacted the families of students at the school who received the assignment via letter, which said the worksheet’s content “does not align with the beliefs or mission” of the district and was “not in line with approved curriculum.” He said the assignment had been removed from the course and steps were being taken “to ensure that it is not used in the future.”
Loretta Stevens, who is a spokesperson for Teachers Pay Teachers, sent out an email to USA TODAY that the content in the assignment was “inappropriate and does not belong in classrooms or on our platform.”
The organization says it has a policy that prohibits resources that “trivialize traumatic experiences, or disrespect, discriminate, or have the effect of marginalizing others,” she said.
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