School responds after ‘abusive’ racial experiment left young kids in tears; harassment, segregation by hair and skin color
A Texas elementary school is under fire after conducting a segregation experiment on students and airing graphic autopsy images without parental notification.
Leon Springs Elementary is a member of the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas. NBC-San Antonio was the first to report on the news that fifth-grade students were made to participate in the activity that assigned privileges to some students based on characteristics while also devaluing others.
Scholar Christopher Rufo laid out more of the details on Twitter.
Mike and Brandi Lininger, parents of a ten-year-old daughter who attends Leon Springs, provided details on the experiment from January and explained how it left their daughter feeling hurt and confused.
“All of the dark-haired kids, the brown- and black-haired kids, were treated as the privileged ones and the blonde-haired and the redhead kids were the ones treated not so nicely,” Mrs. Lininger said.
“She was hurt,” Mrs. Lininger added, “her friends, and she named to the principal and to district officials, names of her friends that were crying.”
In addition to the activities, the students were required to watch “4 Little Girls,” a Spike Lee documentary about the bombing of an Alabama church in 1963. Four black girls, between the ages of 11 and 14, were killed in the bombing, and their autopsy photos are included in the documentary.
The teacher claimed that she fast-forwarded through the segments that contained graphic images, but the Liningers confirmed their daughter and her classmates saw the photos.
“The things that she said that she skipped over,” Mr. Lininger explained, “my daughter was able to describe to us to a ‘T.’ So that night our daughter was unable to go to sleep in our own room…”
“…she was scared,” Mr. Lininger added.
The school district released a statement in lieu of an interview and explained, “The activity and video in question were part of a larger fifth-grade project-based lesson around the inequity of segregation.”
The statement went on to say, “While the campus did receive positive feedback from several parents…District and campus administration recognize the parent’s concerns and agree that the activity and video are not age-appropriate and will not be used again.”
The activity had been based on an exercise from the 70s developed by a teacher named Jane Elliott. Elliot, now known for diversity training, divided students as inferior or superior on the condition of eye color. The intent was to give them the experience of being a minority.
The Liningers expressed that their issue was not with the lesson on segregation, but on the lack of transparency from the district with regard to the material.
“They send us notes and newsletters about everything else,” Mrs. Lininger explained. “Your child is going to see ‘The Polar Express’ and it’s pajama day on Friday before winter break, and we get no notice that they’re going to do a social experiment on segregation.”
The Liningers explained that they came forward about the experiment because they wanted to make sure that other parents were made aware after lack of communication from the district. Other parents confirmed the story to NBC News but did not wish to be publicly identified.
Rufo went on to express that this is not an isolated incident.
“Progressives are re-segregating American institutions under the guise of ‘racial equity,'” he wrote in an essay, “The Ghost of Jim Crow.”
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