Middle School Quiz Asks 6th Graders to Identify Terms Like 'Affair,' 'Trophy Wife,' 'Boy-Toy'
Sixth graders at a school in Virginia were given an assignment that a concerned parent says contains inappropriate questions about extramarital and adulterous relationships.
A parent of an 11-year-old child at Carter G. Woodson Middle School in Hopewell, Virginia turned to social media and to the news media this week to voice her displeasure after her sixth-grade daughter and her classmates were given a family quiz. The quiz seemed harmless at first but drew her ire in the final few questions.
ABC8 reports that sixth grader Faith Sample received a quiz in her Family and Consumer Sciences class that asked students to name different familial relationships.
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While the first few questions asked things like "What do you call the father of your father?" and "What do you call the daughter of your sister?," the quiz took a turn in the last four questions.
Question 17 reads, "What do you call it when a married person has a relationship with someone else?"
The answer that Sample wrote was "an affair."
In question 18, the children were asked, "What do you call a married man's girlfriend?"
Sample's answer was a "mistress."
Question 19 asked, "What do you call the much younger boyfriend of an older woman?" Sample's answer was "boy toy."
Question 20: "What do you call the much younger and beautiful wife of an older, wealthy man?"
Sample's answer was "trophy wife."
According to WRIC, mother Tara Sample says that she was "shocked" to see the teacher would think that such questions would be appropriate to ask of kids that age.
"It was highly inappropriate for a teacher to bring this up in a family class, which was family and consumer science, because it had nothing to do with the family unit that is outside the family unit," Tara told the news station.
Hopewell Public Schools Superintendent Melody Hackney told WRIC that the assignment in question was downloaded off the internet by a teacher and was not approved by the school. Hackney admitted that the assignment was inappropriate.
"We were made aware last evening of the Facebook coverage of the assignment given to students in the Family and Consumer Sciences program at our middle school. We immediately began to investigate. Upon further review, we have determined that a teacher downloaded this worksheet from the Internet," Hackney was quoted as stating. "This content was not a part of the current and approved curriculum for this course nor was it in any way an appropriate learning tool for middle school aged children."
Hackney also explained that the assignment in question was never referenced in the teacher's weekly lesson plan that is reviewed and approved before lessons are given.
"Additional controls and School Board Office supports have been put in place," Hackney said. "At this point, this matter has become a personnel issue and no further comment is appropriate."
The assignment in question appears to have come from a website that aids teachers who teach English to non-native English speakers. The website is called the "Internet Second Language Collective"
News of the assignment given to 11-year-old students in Hopewell, Virginia comes as it was reported earlier this month that a teacher in New York was suspended after extensive "gender-identity" packets were given to students as young as 11. The packets were handed out by a member of a local LGBT advocacy organization and included a vocabulary section that defined sexual terms like "catcher" and "bottom."
In September, a Christian parent raised concern and a teacher was investigated after students at a middle school in West Virginia were shown a rap music video that depicted a same-sex relationship.
The music video in question was Logic's 2017 song titled "1-800-273-8255." The school district said in a statement that the rap video was not the suicide prevention video that was approved by the school.
