Father stunned by fifth grader's homework assignment - wistv.com - Columbia, South Carolina

A father was troubled by his son’s homework assignment.

“It blowed my mind,” Eric Robinson said of an assignment asking fifth graders to create a wanted poster for a Ku Klux Klan member.

Robinson said the homework was a social studies assignment that his son and others received Wednesday at Clinton Elementary School.

Robinson provided FOX Carolina a copy.

Students were asked to sketch the person, provide three reasons why they’re a “bad guy” and a “quote from a person living at the time showing what people might have said about this person,” along with a reward amount.

“It’s okay to teach kids about hate groups… But to me she went too far with it,” Robinson said.

Laurens County School Superintendent David O’Shields said the assignment is a state requirement intended to teach students that the KKK was a criminal/terrorist organization that murdered people, participated in voter suppression and used violence to intimidate African Americans.

School officials spoke to the teacher about the assignment, O’Shields said. 

Administrators told her that although the assignment may have fulfilled the state requirement, teachers must be careful about such assignments and are working with concerned parents on a way to better handle such assignments in the future.

Robinson spoke with school officials on Thursday and was satisfied with the explanation.

He said his son and students won’t have to complete the homework assignment.

Robinson thinks the assignment was “inappropriate” and could have caused racial tension among children.

He said such as assignment is too much for a child his son's age to take in and thinks that the particular part of the curriculum should be taught to students in more advanced grades.

According to the S.C. Social Studies Academic Standards, “Students continue their study of the history of the United States in grade five, beginning with Reconstruction and continuing through the present day” and are expected to demonstrate an understanding of the historic period and its impact on the United States, including "the purpose and motivations of subversive groups during Reconstruction and their rise to power after the withdrawal of federal troops from the South."

To view the S.C. Social Studies Academic Standards, click here.

Copyright 2015 FOX Carolina (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.