6mo ago

Sacramento high school biology final includes racist questions, targets students

www.sacbee.com /news/local/education/article289702084.html

A Luther Burbank High School freshman was surprised to read his full name included on a biology final. Not only that, but he was being ridiculed. “In high school, there are individuals who are cross-eyed like (the name of a fellow student) and (the name of the student previously mentioned), which is a dominant trait. We call those individuals ‘weirdoes’. So, if you crossed two weirdoes (the two students named again), that are heterozygous for being cross-eyed, what is the offspring that would result?” Many students in the class were targeted by first and last name on the exam. Teacher Alex Nguyen chose to describe these students by their ethnicities and physical features, and then paired them up, posing questions about what traits a theoretical child of these two students would have. On one question, the teacher wrote a disclaimer, saying “in no way do I promote students being sexually active,” but the student’s parents and other teachers at the school said that the implication of any sexual relationship between students is inappropriate.

51 comments

I mean, if we wanted our best and brightest (and most compassionate) to teach, we would pay them the best salary they could get with their degrees.
Note to good teachers out there (I'm a teacher too): I'm not saying there aren't any! I'm just saying that those doing the hiring can't afford to be terribly picky.
- Teacher pay is supposed to be near the best in the nation in California too. But we still don't pay teachers enough and this is the result we get.
  
  But is that normalized for cost of living? Highest in the nation might still be near subsistence level in one of the highest COL states.
- An education system that requires martyrs as teachers is not a sustainable plan.
  
  preach!

“For some reason, the African American culture has influenced most of the student body. How? In African Americans, they have a gene for the pimp walk, which is dominant. What is the result if you cross (student name) homozygous dominant Latina with a homozygous recessive Hmong like (student name)?”
The question goes on to refer to the dominant trait as walking with a limp and the recessive trait as normal.
The teacher also claimed falling asleep in class was dominant.
And all the examples seem to be the same basic question, just different insults shoehorned in.
- Sounds like they were trying to test students on how dominant/recessive genes work, but trying to make jokes so it'd feel relatable. But the jokes are just not funny at all. You have to be REAL close to someone for that to be a joke instead of an insult.
  
  To me it sounds like none of us have context, and although inappropriate I suspect it's far less devastating to the kids being tested than it would be to outside observers imagining themselves in the kids shoes.
  My senior year had a teacher who slipped in a bunch of insider knowledge "material" into their exams to see who was paying attention/wasn't there that day ("this ocean current should not be confused with this similarly named walk that we used to do when I was in school, if you see it spelled this incorrect way it's the walk and not the current" (only without the latter qualifier), if any of you have ever taken this class, and didn't miss lecture that day, you'll know exactly which high school I went to and who's class I'm talking about, hit me up!)

What the fuck.
- Holy shit. Reads like the teacher fully lost it.
  
  Wants to be in the rubber room and not have to work for the rest of his career?
  
  You should see the “sleeping in class” one. He pseudo-curses in it and talks about how rude it is before going on with the question.
- Wouldn't it be wierdos, not wierdoes? My autocorrect seems to think so.
  Also in the UK, where I'm from, we have standardised testing, when i was a kid the tests were all made by exam boards like AQA, OCR and EdExcel. I believe they still are.
  Despite the flaws that come with that it was better than allowing an individual to come up with the test as it removed personal bias and, obviously, derogatory remarks about students in the class.
  
  I have also learned that “weirdos” is hugely offensive and California, USA. Almost as bad as “goof” in parts of Canada (goof means paedo in Canada)
- Fire them.
- I suspect there's nuance or personal nicknames being lost from context here. I strongly doubt a teacher (unless they want to be fired) calls students out like this without prior development of the material.
  But I'm sure my take is far too rational for the knee jerk wing of my peers.
  
  I don't think there's anything close to room for nuance here. No matter how "friendly" you think you are with your students and how much you think they like you, this is not acceptable behavior from a high school teacher.
  
  Teachers can just be cruel sometimes. Some of my worst bullys in school were teachers. One of my teachers meowed like a cat at my friend in front of the whole class to mock my friend for him meowing.

Goldberg said that due to the test being pulled, “there were challenges with the grading process,” which the district staff is working to correct. “We will evaluate the exams of the students who received the test and our Academic Department will contact students whose final grade has been impacted.” The Allens have not yet heard from administrators about their son’s test.
Throw out the test for all students. This isn't difficult.

This guy needs a better outlet for his frustrations. I don't doubt that teaching high schoolers is a special form of torture (having been a high schooler once upon a time) but test questions are not the place to vent.
I want to believe that these were questions he wrote out in a drunken stupor one night and then printed off the wrong file though doubling down on it with the projector kinda kills that idea. Dude maybe shouldn't have been a teacher but it took him about a decade too long to figure it out.
- He also needs to not be a racist, ablist piece of shit. This goes way beyond venting, this dude believes in ethnic cleansing and shit. I'm surprised there were no phrenology-related questions.
  
  You're getting a lot of context that doesn't seem to exist there...

Society is fully unhinged.
- 🌏🧑‍🚀🔫🧑‍🚀
  
  I guess you are right :(

Wow, that's pretty fucked up for a teacher.
I hope it's a full license revocation.
- No he’s being promoted to district manager in Texas
  
  Are you sure it's not Superintendent of Schools in Florida.
  
  Unfortunately for him, he's not white. I guess he could be "one of the good ones."

"In some roles, there are some individuals who are best known as 'dumbfucks', like (teachers name) and (teachers mother) for not swallowing (teachers name). We can also call these individuals by the proper scientific term, 'unfortunately alive'. In this totally-hypothetical situation, how long would it take (teachers name) to realize the ever-reducing brake pressure of their pedal, and inevitably, that their brake lines have been cut? Assuming their typical trip home, at what speed would they be traveling when they came to this realization? Lastly, what would be the most likely end result of these series of events, taking into account the afternoon rush hour traffic at [question part two] speeds, in their poor-condition 1991 Toyota Tercel?
Bonus credit (10 points): Keeping in mind that (teachers name) is a horrible person, estimate how many individuals might attend their funeral, and how many would be present just to confirm the body?"
Send that shit right back, with a warning.

Seems like this teacher has some mental health issues. Hope they get help and the students get a reexam.

I think another problem in schools is that classrooms are so isolated, which means that teachers are isolated from each other, too. The little world of a classroom can have a great culture and atmosphere, but it can also be pretty fucked up in a multitude of ways when one adult is overseeing 15-25 kids every day for a year. Honestly, it even gets kind of lonely as a teacher when you have so little meaningful time spent with peers.
A good principal steps into each classroom regularly, but more co-teaching and interdisciplinary studies would both be better for students as well as an improvement to teacher culture.
- 15-25 kids.....
  Like, per period? Cause that numbers low for public schooling
  
  15 is low, but 18 - 24 per period is normal in my district. The point still stands, though, even if it's a California classroom.

Another question targeted two students who got in trouble for sleeping in class, again asking students to speculate about what would happen if these students were to have children.
“Here at the wonderful school of LBHS, we have certain students who love to sleep in class. I even see students fall asleep during exams! Can you believe that?! I don’t like it when students sleep in class… it’s rude! So, WAKE THE #$%K UP! Well, through much study, I have concluded that the gene for falling asleep is dominant. Not only that some students sleep, they snore in class. This too is a dominant trait. What are the possible offspring if you cross a homozygous sleeping, heterozygous snoring student (student name) with a homozygous attentive, non-snoring (student name) student?”
“(When I saw that) I was like, so it’s not like you’re joking about it. You’re being serious about it, because that’s what they really do,” the Allens’ son said. “That’s how I knew he was not playing around.”
OK so this wasn't OK, but I get it. On one hand, the majority of the time, I'm a student that appreciates their teachers. I pay attention, I ask questions if I need to, and I don't interrupt. The people that do have always pissed me off. Especially when I was in college, and I would have loved to see a teacher lay into these types of students who only ever frustrate and distract while everyone else is trying to learn. That being said, I've also had bad teachers. In 4th grade, I had a teacher that was a misandrist. She gave favorable treatment and grades to the girls in the class, and would be mean to the boys. It sucked, and every boy complained about her, but nothing was ever done. Thankfully, I only ever had her for that one year, but she did make it miserable.
All that being said, I'm still planning to run for office someday, and one of my platforms will be to double all teachers pay.

51 comments