An Ohio high school is under fire after all the students in an African-American history class participated in a classroom assignment last week where they picked cotton and listened to black spiritual music from the pre-Civil War era.
Youngstown’s Cardinal Mooney High School announced this weekend that it would no longer teach the cotton-picking lesson.
The exercise, which the high school has used for years, was intended to be “an immersive and kinesthetic experience,” crafted to help students “enhance their understanding, albeit only by a slight glimpse, of the plight slaves had to endure during this dark time in America’s history,” the principal of the private Catholic high school said in a statement.
But this year, a rumor spread on social media that only black students were asked to participate. Students, staff and administrators eventually confirmed that the rumor was false, and that all students had completed the lesson, regardless of race.
As news of the exercise broke on social media and was covered by local press, the high school’s Minority Alumni Council condemned the lesson as “deeply troubling,” “inappropriate and unnecessary,” and evocative of “deeply charged and painfully destructive messages and attitudes that have no place in today’s classroom.”
The Minority Alumni Council called for a town hall meeting, as well as diversity and sensitivity training. The local NAACP chapter also launched an investigation, asking the school to fill out Office of Civil Rights forms.
