Missouri elementary school teacher placed on leave after assignment calls for students to decide prices for slaves

A fifth-grade teacher in Missouri has been placed on leave as the school district investigates an assignment that reportedly had the students set a price for a slave.

Fox 2 St. Louis reports the Mehlville School District is investigating the assignment given to fifth-graders at Blades Elementary School. The district has placed the teacher, who has not been identified, on administrative leave.

The assignment in question was part of a social studies worksheet and imagined the students as slave traders setting their own prices for slaves.

“You own a plantation or farm and therefore need more workers. You begin to get involved in the slave trade industry and have slaves work on your farm. Your product to trade is slaves,” the assignment prompts, which went viral after a parent posted a picture of it on Facebook.

“Set your price for a slave,” the assignment reads, followed by a blank space for students to use to fill in a price. “These could be worth a lot.”

That question was one of 12 that school Principal Jeremy Booker said “attempted to address market practices.”

“Students were learning about having goods, needing goods and obtaining goods and how that influenced early settlement in America,” he wrote in a statement sent to parents. “Some students who participated in this assignment were prompted to consider how plantation owners traded for goods and slaves.”

He added that the assignment was “culturally insensitive” and the teacher expressed “significant remorse.”

John Bowman, president of the St. Louis County NAACP, told CNN that educators need more training on dealing with assignments and material regarding slavery.

“There also needs to be some serious and immediate implicit bias, cultural bias, cultural difference training,” Bowman said, adding that he hopes to meet with officials from the school.