Today in "is this even for real?"

I mean, did whoever printed this up honestly not think it was going to end in apologies, embarrassment and serious questions about who should be allowed to teach kids? I'm genuinely asking because look at this, just...just look at it:

We'll get to the "holy shit is this even for real?" part in a moment,
but are we seriously saying that photocopiers are not only still in use
but haven't improved in the decades since I was in elementary school?

"Um, actually, we had a Black
president, so racism: solved."

-America

So to address the question posed in the caption above, oh yes, this is even for real. It's from a worksheet given to fourth-grade students in one of the suburbs of my hometown and while you probably thought that slavery in America was a five century horror show of kidnapping, forced labor, and murder that separated families, decimated communities, and established a system of discrimination that still echoes down through the ages, it was apparently just a big mix-up. If you need a minute, I completely understand. I'll just wait here while you compose yourself. Take your time. 

History: it's what ever you want it to be!

Back? Great. So this: "As an exchange for the trip to America, African Americans agreed to work for colonists for _______ years, but then were kept as slaves." Which--is whoever handed this out maybe, you know, unfamiliar with...everything? How does one even--like this is presumably an adult who's not only allowed to drive and go to the store and stuff, but can vote and teach kids. This is bad. This is flat Earth, dinosaurs are extinct because Noah ran out of room on the ark bad. 

Given the size of antebellum plantation
houses, there is nothing that can go in that
blank that isn't back-breaking labor. 

The rest of it looks like pretty basic info that might not be technically wrong, but it's definitely not ok. Like, take the "What jobs did slaves have?" section for example. I think it probably wants kids to answer with: 

• -Worked in the fields.
• -Churned butter.
• -and I don't know, Puttered? around the house. Seriously, what is it supposed to be?

When you reduce the suffering of generations of enslaved people to some fill-in-the-blanks, it sometimes fails to capture the--what's the word? Gist? The gist of an unforgivable crime that stains the very soul of the nation. You know? Huh? Oh, no, not the genocide of the indigenous peoples, our other unforgivable crime. We've uh...we've got a few of those here. 

"This isn't so bad, what was the big deal?"

-kids in this class

"But what I'm saying is how come
there's no white history month?"

-dumbs who are out there*

The worksheet came from something called The Classroom Nook, which is an online resource for teachers although evidently not a great one and the teacher who used it was new to the job--which, well clearly. But like, surely there is a basic level of knowledge about U.S. history that is requisite to being a history teacher, right? And that level has to better than someone on a Jimmy Kimmel live on the street segment. I mean, if you just let anyone teach, you'll get a generation of ignorant adults who--oh, right...

Look, maybe the crushing reality of slavery is difficult to talk to ten year olds about but there's probably a better way to teach American history than suggesting that enslaved people were just indentured servants who got duped or that slavery was just a kinda shitty job. Glossing over it or making it sound not so bad because you don't want to upset the children is dangerous and probably the cause of a lot of what's wrong with everything.

Sorry kids, history is a bummer, so maybe let's not repeat it?

*I just made this up and grabbed a screen shot. This person probably didn't really say that, and I'm sure they're very nice in real life. Probably.