Students made to act like slaves during history lesson at elementary school
The mother of an elementary school student is frustrated after her son was told by a teacher to participate in an embarrassing demonstration of slavery for a history lesson
A parent at a suburban New York school wants answers after a questionable lesson on slavery left her fifth grader son upset and shaken for having to act as a slave who was being auctioned off.
“I’m getting teary eyed about it because it’s like, how could somebody do this to my son,” mother Vernex Harding said.
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Harding was angered after learning that her son, a student at The Chapel School in Bronxville, N.Y., was made to participate in a mock slave auction during a fifth grade Social Studies class earlier this week, New York’s WPIX reports.
Harding said her son recalled the moment he and other Black classmates were pulled into the school’s hallway and told “to put imaginary chains along our necks and wrists, and shackles on our ankles” by his teacher.
The African American students were then paraded by into the classroom before their white peers who were told to bid on the students at the fake auction, Harding said.
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The school principal held an emergency meeting with parents and administrators and called the lesson “racially insensitive and hurtful.”
The teacher has since been removed from the class as an investigation is underway.
New York Attorney General Letitia James sent WPIX a statement Thursday, “the reports of racist ‘lessons’ by a teacher at The Chapel School are deeply troubling. My office is monitoring this matter closely.”
