PhillyBurbs.com When she was helping her son with his homework Saturday night, a Central Bucks mother noticed something that surprised and shocked her.
"I couldn't understand what I was looking at," said the woman, whose identity the newspaper has agreed not to disclose.
It was a work sheet called "Solving Equations using Multiplication and Division!" and it featured a photo of a black man wearing a straw hat, shirt and suspenders, with his mostly toothless mouth wide open. As if to underscore the man's stupidity, at the bottom of the picture was written, "No wai!!!"
The mother learned that her son, the only black student in his eighth-grade pre-algebra class at Lenape Middle School, was teased by another student when the assignment was distributed.
"One of the kids in the classroom turned around and said, 'Is that your father?' " she said.
"We are highly insulted and offended. We sent him to school to learn pre-algebra. He should be protected from this stuff, not have it thrown in his face...He gets enough (racial slurs) and negativity from the kids. To have the teacher encourage it?"
Both the mother and her son are black. On Monday, the student stayed home from school and his mother called the principal first thing in the morning.
Lenape Middle School principal Nick Chubb said administrators are thoroughly investigating the matter, and he could not comment further until the investigation is complete.
School district spokeswoman Karen Smith said the math teacher, Matthew Curran, frequently uses photos and other illustrations on his work sheets to engage the students.
Curran reported, through Smith, that he found the image by doing a Google Images search for the phrase "multiply and divide."
"I chose it because it said 'no way,' which is a comment my students make when I require them to show each calculation," he wrote in an e-mail. "I had no idea that I might offend anyone. I am very sorry for any distress that this has caused my students and the community."
The boy's mother said she spent much of the weekend angry and in tears.
"It's very stressful to be an African-American in the community and you want to fit in and you want to embrace all of the things Central Bucks offers you," she said. "Who's protecting us here?"
Monday night, after meeting with the boy's family, NAACP Bucks County President John Jordan issued a written statement denouncing the events.
"It brings into question whether all of our children are being provided a safe and fair environment in which to learn. What happened here is unacceptable, and we will take steps to make sure it never happens again."
NAACP Bucks County Executive Committee members plan to meet with the principal and the teacher involved in the incident at Lenape Middle School "in hopes of amicably resolving the issue," the statement went on to say.
When the assignment was handed out to the class, several students expressed their disapproval of the picture, according to the NAACP. But the teacher told them to do the work anyway, according to the boy's mother.
She asked her son why he didn't leave the class.
"He said, 'Mommy, I'm in school.' He knows the rules. He has to follow the rules," she said. "He's trying to get on the honor roll right now."
The woman doesn't understand why the photo was even included on the math work sheet.
"This has nothing to do with math," she said.
A Google Images search for "multiply and divide" provides other images that might be considered more math-related - a cartoon drawing of a child holding math symbols, a cartoon calculator with legs and various photos of calculators.
The boy's mother thinks his teacher should have chosen a different image for the work sheet, and needs to be careful to choose appropriate images in the future.
She plans to keep her son home from school until she feels as though it's safe to send him again.
"Racism is usually so subtle. To have it so blatant is what is so shocking," she said. "Hopefully, we can all learn from this and move forward in a positive way - for everyone, not just the black kids or the Hispanic kids or the Jewish kids or the other subgroups ... We need some peace and understanding. I don't want hate."
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