Seventh grade assignment characterized the president as “racist” and questioned whether he should be impeached.
A middle school teacher in the public Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District near Houston assigned 12 and 13 year old seventh grade students to read and answer questions on an essay blasting President Donald Trump as “racist,” “insensitive,” and counter to American values as part of a lesson on inferring information from written text.
Even for seventh grade students who are not overly familiar with politics, it is easy to parse the message of the piece which essentially translates as ‘Dump Trump.’ Titled, “Trump Against American Values,” the essay begins, “Throughout Donald Trump’s time in the American spotlight, we have come to see his true colors. From the beginning of his presidency, we have witnessed insensitive remarks toward other racial and cultural groups.”
The assignment goes on to say that “Some of Trump’s policies have gone against what Americans value most, like the freedom of opportunity” and labels the president as “insensitive” for his focus on building a wall on the border with Mexico.
The piece concludes with remarks that could well have been lifted from a campaign commercial for one of Trump’s 2020 Democratic challengers:
“With all of these racist remarks by our president, I think that we as a people need to take a stand and show that we will not accept this kind of leadership in our country.”
Multiple choice questions follow this political diatribe. One asks, "Which of the following conclusions would the author most likely agree with?" The possible answers include, “Donald Trump should not be president” and “America’s future is in grave danger.”
A second question asks the middle schoolers to complete the sentence, "The reader can infer that ..." The available options include, “Mexican Americans are the major group upset with President Trump” and “The United States will impeach Donald Trump.”
The politically charged assignment was made public by Texas state representative Briscoe Cain, a Republican, who was made aware of it by a parent in his district.
Cain minced no words in calling out the school district and teacher (whose name has not been released) in a post on Facebook:
"This individual has violated the sacred trust that every parent has with the State of Texas when they send their child into a public school," Cain stated of the teacher who assigned the anti-Trump essay. "They have lost the privilege of being in a classroom with Texas children, and forfeit the title of teacher. No teacher should attempt to indoctrinate a child to their ideology, no matter who is...
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Can't get three words into the reading assignment without a blatant grammar error. A better assignment would be to critique the reading, beginning with correcting grammar errors followed by describing why each sentence depends on unsupported assumptions.
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