Who'd Be on Your Spaceship? A School Exercise Backfires in Ohio [View all]

[left-of-center2012]

An Ohio school superintendent has apologized for a class exercise that asked middle school students to choose from a list of racially, ethnically and religiously diverse candidates to save or leave behind if Earth were “doomed for destruction.”

The assignment presented 12 potential spaceship passengers, including “a militant African-American medical student,” “a Hispanic clergyman who is against homosexuality,” “an Asian, orphaned 12-year-old boy,” “a homosexual male professional athlete,” and a “60-year-old Jewish university administrator.” The students were instructed to select eight to take to safety on another planet, ranking them from the most deserving to the least.

“It’s disturbing all the way around,” said Bernadette Hartman, whose son completed the assignment during an eighth-grade social studies class at Roberts Middle School in Cuyahoga Falls, a large suburb near Akron.

The teacher used it as an “icebreaker,” the superintendent, Todd M. Nichols of the Cuyahoga Falls School District, said in a statement. The intent was to “promote tolerance and break down stereotypes,” he said, and help fulfill the district’s goal of engaging in conversations about “diversity awareness and social justice.”
“The teacher and district offer their most sincere apologies for the offense caused by the content used in this assignment,” the statement said. “Future assignments on this topic will be more carefully selected.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/us/ohio-school-spaceship-diversity-quiz.html