An elementary school teacher in Missouri reportedly gave her students an assignment that asked them to set a price for a slave.

According to NBC News, the unnamed teacher gave the assignment to a fifth-grade social studies class at Blades Elementary School in St. Louis last week.

Lee Hart posted a photo of the lesson on Facebook, saying her friend's child attends the school and was given the assignment.

"It is so wrong on so many levels," Hart wrote on Facebook. "What do you think the plan of action should be?
This was supposedly a westward expansion lesson. Some were given food, wood, water, and….slaves."

After asking the students to determine the cost of items such as grain, fruit, fish, a container of oil and a cow, the last question of the lesson asks the children to set the price for a slave.

"You own a plantation or farm and therefore need more workers," the assignment states. "You begin to get involved in the slave trade industry and have slaves work on your farm. Your product to trade is slaves."

According to CNN, Mehlville School District superintendent Chris Gaines apologized in a statement, saying he is disappointed that the incident happened at the school.

"Asking a student to participate in a simulated activity that puts a price on a person is not acceptable," Gaines said. "Racism of any kind, even inadvertently stemming from cultural bias, is wrong and is not who we aspire to be as a school district."

The school's principal school Jeremy Booker also sent a letter to parents, saying the assignment was "culturally insensitive" and the teacher had expressed "significant remorse."

"As part of both the Missouri Learning Standards for fifth-grade Social Studies and the fifth-grade Mehlville School District curriculum, students were learning about having goods, needing goods and obtaining goods and how that influenced early settlement in America," Booker said. "I am working with district leadership to provide all Blades teachers and staff with professional development on cultural bias in the near future."

John Bowman, president of the St. Louis County NAACP, spoke to Fox 2 and said Booker's letter to parents isn't enough.

"It should be a public apology, so that the message is made clear, not only throughout the school district, but throughout the state that this is unacceptable, very inhumane," he said. "It doesn't speak to us taking care of each other as human beings."

Bowman said educators need to be more sensitive when it comes to slavery.

"There also needs to be some serious and immediate implicit bias, cultural bias, cultural difference training," he told the news station.

Angela Walker spoke to KMOV4, saying she was shocked when her son brought the assignment home.

"We have to be more culturally sensitive," she said. "We can say to get over homework assignments. 'It's just a homework assignment. That was 100 years ago.' Yes, it was. But it's still someone else's family. Maybe there are people who don't see the wrong in it. We need to be talking about it."

The teacher has been placed on administrative leave, NBC News reported.

In another controversial school assignment this week, a North Carolina teacher reportedly asked students to compare the value between slaves and white people. The lesson was allegedly focusing on the three-fifths compromise, according to WCNC.

The mother of one of the students said the assignment asked: "how many slaves would be needed to equal at least four white people?"

Blades Elementary School

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