Children ‘hurt’ after being separated by hair colour to teach them about racism
One set of parents said their daughter was ‘confused’ and her classmates in tears following the task.
A school is facing criticism following an immersive lesson that separated children by hair colour to teach them about segregation.
Fifth-grade students at Leon Springs Elementary School in San Antonio, Texas, were split into two groups depending on their hair colour before being given tasks to complete.
The group of dark-haired children were deemed privileged and treated as superior, while the lighter-haired children were considered intelligent and inferior during the interactive class.
During one of the tasks, the group of fair-haired pupils were purposely given puzzles with pieces missing and were later made to clear up after their peers.
The parents of a 10-year-old said their daughter was left ‘hurt’ and ‘confused’ and her classmates in tears following the task.
Mike and Brandi Lininger said they has no knowledge of the class beforehand as it was not flagged by the school.
‘They send us notes and newsletters about everything else,’ they told News 4SA.
‘Your child is going to see The Polar Express and it’s pyjama day on Friday before the winter break, and we get no notice that they’re going to do a social experiment on segregation.’
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The 10- and 11-year-old students were also shown Spike Lee’s 1997 documentary 4 Little Girls, which details the 1963 bombing of an Alabama church by the Ku Klux Klan.
Four young Black girls aged between the ages of 11 and 14 died in the attack ahead of Sunday service.
The film features graphic material including autopsy photos of the girls’ bodies which the teacher fast-forwarded through, but the Liningers say were seen by the children.
‘The things that she said she skipped over, my daughter was able to describe to us to a tee,’ the dad said.
‘So that night our daughter was unable to go to sleep in our own room, she was so scared.’
Northside Independent School District said while it received positive feedback from a number of parents, it recognised the Liningers’ concerns and the lesson would not be taught in the same way moving forward.
A statement read: ‘The activity and video in question were part of a larger fifth-grade project-based lesson around the inequity of segregation.
‘While the campus did receive positive feedback from several parents, the district and campus administration recognise the parents’ concerns and agree that the activity and video are not age-appropriate and will not be used again.’
The immersive lesson appears to have been based on a well-known exercise devised by award-winning teacher Jane Elliott.
The Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Exercise, conceived in the 1970s in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, saw participants separated by eye colour and exposed the blue- and green-eyed ones to the experience of being a minority.
Workshops of the experiment are still run to this day, with Elliott’s website stating everyone engaging with her work has been ‘dramatically affected by it’.
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