A Georgia school district's response to complaints about a math worksheet dealing with slaves picking oranges didn't sit well with some parents, they say.

District officials in Norcross said they would work with the faculty at Beaver Creek Elementary School to come up with better questions than: "Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?"

But some parents and local civil-rights activists say the entire series of questions dealing with story-problem slaves toiling on a hypothetical plantation ranked a public apology.

"Intentionally or not, this was inappropriate," Jennifer Falk, a community activist and parent of two high school students in the area, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The newspaper said Sunday other questions included calculating how many times a slave named Frederick would get beaten in a week if he average two wallops per day.

District spokeswoman Sloan Roach told the newspaper the teachers were trying to fold a little American history into the third-grade math exercise. "Clearly, they did not do as good of a job as they should have done," she said.

lol o0 i wouldnt answer only one of thoseuestions o0
and what teachers were that?!!

rather, its sad, i forgot to say

Wow. Just... Wow.

White people and their overly sensitive racism meters.

I'm black and I think i would have around the class, taken all the papers, and threw them out the window....I mean i would understand if that was a History or Cultural class but it was Math. Which leads me to one question....."WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!"

thats bad

>>5 I see it as more of a moral issue than a racial one. Why would it be necessary to have something like slaves in a children's math problem in the first place? While we're at it, let's include wars if we're trying to use history.

27 US soldiers are in Vietnam, when out of nowhere, 18 of them are brutally killed by Vietcong, and 6 of them step on a landmine. How many veterans are left with shell-shock?

Point is it's an inappropriate topic for math class, racial issues aside.