Parents in Texas have spoken of their anger after their fifth grader was left in tears after a thrilling introduction to segregation before she was shown autopsy photos of four black children killed by the Ku Klux Klan.
In January, students at Leon Springs Elementary School in San Antonio, which has 524 students from kindergarten through fifth grade, learned about segregation.
During the classes, the children were divided into groups of dark-haired and fair-haired students.
They were then given a series of tasks and responsibilities.
Dark-haired students were seen as privileged and told they were taller, while young people with blond or red hair were seen as less intelligent and inferior.
Both groups of students were given a puzzle, but the blond students didn’t have a piece.
The blond students also had to clean up after the other group at the end of the exercise.
Mike and Brandi Leininger, whose 10-year-old daughter attends Leon Springs, said they are outraged by school segregation, which is causing their child to worry.
Leon Springs Elementary School in San Antonio (pictured) held classes in January.
Mike and Brandi Lininger told News4SA that their 10-year-old daughter was upset by the lesson and some of her classmates were brought to tears.
“She was hurt, her friends, and she told the principal and county officials the names of her friends who were crying,” Brandi Lininger said.
She said the class was also shown Spike Lee’s 1997 documentary 4 Little Girls, about the 1963 Alabama church bombing by the Ku Klux Klan.
The attack killed four African-American women about the same age as in the class—ages 11 to 14.
The film includes graphic photographs of the girls’ autopsies.
The class teacher said she quickly forwarded the autopsy photos, but the Liningers said the kids in their daughter’s class did see the graphic photos.
“What she said and missed, my daughter was able to describe to us with the letter T,” said Mike Leininger.
“So that night our daughter couldn’t sleep in our room, she was scared.”
The class was shown Spike Lee’s 1997 documentary 4 Little Girls. The film tells the story of the murder of four parishioners during the 1963 Alabama bombing.
The Liningers said they were mostly resentful that they weren’t warned ahead of time.
“They send us notes and newsletters about everything else,” says Brandi Leininger.
“Your child will be watching The Polar Express and the Friday before winter break will be pajama day and we won’t get a notice that they’re going to do a social segregation experiment.”
According to News4SA, the course was based on an exercise developed in the 1970s by a teacher named Jane Elliott, now a world-renowned diversity coach and lecturer.
The school district has since said it does not consider the classroom experiment to be “age-appropriate.”
In Elliot’s original exercise, students were labeled inferior or superior solely on the basis of their eye color and subjected them to a minority experience.
Over the years, other teachers have copied the experiment, sometimes using hair color as a distinguishing factor.
The school district, Northside Independent School District, told the channel that they have looked into complaints about the lesson from the Liningers, which were confirmed by another family, and have decided not to repeat the lesson.
“The exercise and video in question was part of a larger lesson based on a project focusing on the injustice of segregation in the fifth grade,” the school said in a statement.
“While the campus has received positive feedback from several parents, the district and campus acknowledge the parents’ concerns and agree that the event and video are not age appropriate and will no longer be used.”
The lessons come against the backdrop of a nationwide discussion about the similar “justice” lessons being foisted on children by wake school boards that critics say have their origins in critical racial theory.
Supporters say they provide an important insight into everyday prejudices black Americans face, but detractors have branded them as irrelevant and divisive.