Fresh Loaf’s Gwynedd Stuart expresses some sympathy for Luis Rivera, the obviously contrite Gwinnett County math teacher forced to resign for crafting some rather ignorant word problems.
Rivera’s 20-question homework assignment used slave beatings and picking cotton to link lessons about ex-slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass to math computation. One of the problems read: “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?”
Reprehensible, no doubt, and the punishment, though severe, is not unreasonable. That doesn’t excuse the grandstanding by the perpetually indignant, especially when you consider there’s nothing to indicate the teacher, while clearly overmatched, is some Klansman. Last I checked the Triple K wasn’t too fond of guys named Luis Rivera.
Stuart:
A guy named Henry White — who, the AJC pointed out, doesn’t even have kids — called the incident an “egregious act of assault on the minds of a kid by an adult” at a Gwinnett County School Board meeting. And several parents said they wanted the school to make counseling available to their children. I don’t want to say they’re overreacting … but maybe they’re overreacting.
A commenter counters:
Would you feel the same if the homework questions were about the holocaust? I thought so.
It won’t be long before someone demands Stuart attend sensitivity training for her egregious assault on the minds of readers.
The counseling bill is in the mail, Gwynedd.
ATL Contrarian 
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