Personal Injury Law

Slavery Lesson Goes Awry: Was It Educator Misconduct?

A white seventh-grade social studies teacher teaching a lesson about slavery attempted to simulate the conditions by which African natives were transported in slave ships by binding the hands and feet of two black girls with tape and having them crawl under a desk. It happened in Haverstraw Middle School in Haverstraw, New York of the North Rockland School District. It not clear whether the girls volunteered for their role in the lesson, but it does not seem very likely that the students felt that they had much choice to refuse their teacher?s request that they participate in being bound. The girls were not the only blacks in the class.

Full post as published by Legal Blog on December 05, 2008 (boomark / email).