Teacher assigns 4th graders to draw pictures of 9/11- including people jumping

[Ms. Toad]

18. You don't know that is what the assignment was.

Here is the teacher's version of what the assignment was:

El Paso Independent School District officials said they spoke to the teacher, who said the terrorist attacks were part of class discussion, and students were asked to draw something they learned in the discussion.

Because the images of desperate victims leaping to their deaths are part of what appears in public near 9/11 (I ran across that particular image at least twice), I don't know that the child was even exposed to that detail as part of the class discussion.

Like I said elsewhere in this thread, before I condemn the teacher for the lesson and/or assignment, I want more than the parent's recitation of the child's interpretation of the assignment. And, I want it from a news source other than FOX news.

IF the discussion exposed the children to people jumping to their deaths that may have been inappropriate. I would prefer decisions about that level of detail of exposure, at least in visual form, be left to the parents. That said, I was around no more than a year older when my pretty conservative school exposed me to my first graphic pictures of the holocaust and, while I found them shocking, I don't find that exposure inappropriate.

If the teacher specifically required them to draw people leaping to their death, that was inappropriate.

If, on the other hand, the child drew those images because that is what she learned from the discussion, or learned from the images she has seen every year since her birth, it is not inappropriate for her to use the assignment to express that learning.