Georgia: An assignment given to a student in a school in the US has sparked outrage. The assignment was to rate Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler who was in power in Germany from 1933-1945. As per Fox5 Atlanta, the students were given a series of questions which asked them to rate Hitler’s characteristics as a leader.
A screenshot of the question-and-answer assignment has been posted on X by a Fox5 reporter, highlighting the sections that cause controversy. In one of the questions the students were asked “According to the Mount Vernon Mindset rubric, how would you rate Adolf Hitler as a ‘solution seeker’?”
Another question to students that was asked was to “rate Adolf Hitler as an ethical decision-maker”. Both questions included options like “Lacks Evidence, Approaching Expectations, Meets Expectations, Exceeds Expectations”. The questions raised some concerns in many of the parents whose children are studying in the school questioning whether these are anti-semitic.
The students also find these questions troubling and made them concerned regarding these questions are glorifying the Nazi leader. “Obviously, that looks horrible in the current context. Knowing Mount Vernon, we do things a little odd around here,” one student told Fox5 Atlanta.
One of the students said that he could see the school’s intended approach to critical thinking. The student said, “I can definitely see why they’d be upset, but overall, I think it’s important to look at both sides of the coin in every situation and I think it’s important to be able to compare and contrast everything that’s happened in our world history, whether it’s been good or bad”.
Fox5 also spoke to some former students who said these questions weren’t given to them during eighth grade. When the school officials got to know about the phrasing of these questions they removed it from the school’s curriculum.
Kristy Lundstrom, Principal of Mount Vernon in a statement said “The assignment was an exploration of World War II designed to boost student knowledge of factual events and understand the manipulation of fear leveraged by Adolf Hitler in connection to the Treaty of Versailles”.
