FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va.—Parents of fifth-grade students at a school in Fairfax County, Virginia, learned on Jan. 12 that their children were asked to role-play as slaves and landowners during a classroom activity.
“This activity was inappropriate and not part of our approved division curriculum,” wrote Josh Douds, principal of the Centreville Elementary School. “During the activity, students participated in a simulation where they acted as slaves and a landowner.”
The Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) said in a statement that the school apologized directly to the families of the affected students for “this regretful lapse in judgment made by an inexperienced trainee teacher who was subsequently counseled on the inappropriateness of the lesson.”
The student teacher conducted the classroom activity to teach the “economics of slavery” under the supervision of an FCPS teacher while being observed by a university supervisor, according to the statement.
School district officials also reiterated their commitment to teaching with dignity and providing professional development support for all employees.
“Anyone who sort of sits with it and thinks about what it means to be enslaved, it’s a horrible thing,” the child’s mother said. “It’s like asking someone to role-play the holocaust.”
The slave-landowner simulation occurred at a tumultuous time for FCPS. It has recently been in the news for several high schools delaying their students’ National Merit award notifications, making this potential differentiator unavailable to hundreds of students’ college applications.
Students who score among the top 3 percent in Preliminary SAT tests obtain this accolade, which opens doors to special scholarship programs. However, high schools are the only recipients of award notifications because the National Merit Scholarship Corp. program, which runs the test, relies on the schools to relay the news to their students.
At the press conference on Jan. 4, Miyares said that if the withholding of merit awards was based on race, national origin, or any other protected status under the Virginia Human Rights Act, it was unlawful.
Last week, neighboring Loudoun County announced that three high schools in its school district discovered the same issue: withholding students’ Merit Award notifications.