Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School, a junior high school in Barnet, London, is in
hot water for its curriculum on the slave trade. Rather than teaching students
about slavery via textbooks and other traditional means, the Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School decided
to have them create business plans for capturing and enslaving Africans,
according to the London
Evening Standard.
To make things as realistic
as possible, students received imaginary tools, such as manacles, thumb screws,
and even whips. Teachers then taught them lessons such as how to carry out
slave raids, bribe African chiefs with goods and alcohol, and ultimately craft
the business proposals for enslavement.
Students also learned the
“good” part of being slave traders: having “an affair with a beautiful African
girl.”
The resulting “mixed-race” male child would then head to Africa to head
the slave business while his father remained in America.
It wasn’t long before word
got out about the slave “curriculum”: A 13-year-old Black female student told
her mother about the lessons, “expressing concern and distress.” The Mother
then complained to Ligali, a pan-African human rights organization, who
filed a complaint against the school.
In response, Queen
Elizabeth’s head teacher, Kate Webster, issued the following apology:
On behalf of the school, I apologize unreservedly
for the distress and anguish caused to [the student] and to her mother, as well
as to you and others in your community who this material may have been shared
with. Now I have had the opportunity to view the Powerpoint in its entirety, I
share your concerns.
Despite having taught the
slave “curriculum” since September 2010, Webster claimed she had no idea about
the lessons until the girl’s mother filed her complaint. Additional steps have
also been taken to discipline the staff member who devised the presentation.
And the LORD shall
bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by the way whereof I spake unto thee,
Thou shalt see it no more again: and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies
for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man shall buy [you].
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Whose possessors
slay them, and hold themselves not guilty: and they that sell them say,
Blessed [be] the LORD; for I am rich: and their own shepherds pity them not.
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All this have I
seen, and applied my heart unto every work that is done under the sun: [there
is] a time wherein one man ruleth over another to his own hurt.
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