A Florida teacher has been fired for assigning a questionable “diversity survey” to her middle school class.
The assignment titled “How Comfortable Am I?” asked students at Fox Chapel Middle School to rank on a scale of 1 through 4 how comfortable they would feel if “a group of young black men are walking toward you on the street,” or if “a homeless man approaches you and asks for change” or if “the young man sitting next to you on the plane is Arab.” Some questions veered into health- and sex-shaming terrtitory—such as what if “your dentist is HIV positive,” and “you discover that the cute young man/woman you’re attracted to is actually a woman/man.”
Other questions asked students if they felt at uneasy around people with disabilities, Native Americans, people living on welfare, and immigrants. Parents and students were upset by the survey, wondering whether it meant to question prejudice or promote it.
“I thought it was very inappropriate,” sixth-grade student Tori Drews told local station WFTS. “I thought some of them were racist. I thought some of them were sexist. I thought it was completely intolerable.”
Drews said the class was supposed to be learning about diversity and accepting people’s differences when the teacher handed out the assignment, apparently instructing students not to take it home to their parents.
“She was going yeah, this is kind of wrong, maybe I should take it back,” Drews says.”Kids were asking if they could share it with their parents. She was like, ‘No, don’t show your mom. Don’t take that home. I’m taking it back up.'”
Karen Jordan, a public information officer for the Hernando County School District, confirmed to the New York Post that the teacher has since been let go. “In no way does that assignment meet the standards of appropriate instructional material,” Jordan said.
H/T New York Post