A class trip to teach students about the Great Depression, has a South Carolina mom upset after she learned her child instead ended up picking cotton in a field while singing old negro spirituals.
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The Black History month trip excursion wasn’t what Jessica Blanchard expected her 10-year-old son Jamari, a student at Ebenezer Avenue Elementary in Rock Hill, to participate in.
She recalled seeing an upsetting video of her son and his fifth-grade classmates, picking cotton in a field while singing songs like, “I like it when you fill the sack. I like it when you don’t talk back. Make money for me.”
“I’m African-American and my ancestors picked cotton. Why would I want my son to pick cotton and think it’s fun?” Blanchard told WJZY. “I think it’s making a mockery. A mockery of slavery. A mockery of what our people went through.”
Administrators reportedly said that the annual field trip to the Carroll School was supposed to focus and teach students about the Great Depression.
“The students are afforded an opportunity to learn directly from two local men, one of whom is a former student of the Carroll School, who lead students through a variety of hands-on activities and experiences. As part of the fifth-grade curriculum, students study the Great Depression time period, and this field trip helps students make real-life connections to this era in American history.”
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“This program here is centered around the Great Depression of the 1930s, so slavery is not the predominant issue,” Cathcart said.
Blanchard is upset but said, of course the kids were acting as kids and her son and his peers thought the slave picking activity and singing slave songs “was funny.”
Administrators now plan to enlist the mom and solicit suggestions on how to improve the program.