The decline in education has been a topic among parents and voters ever since the COVID pandemic saw reading and math scores drop to their lowest points in two decades. A generation’s worth of progress has been erased, and it’s likely, we’ll never recover due to the burgeoning bureaucracy and political cesspool where this issue has taken residency. Yet, what about the quality of other topics? Why do we have so many Generation Z youngsters who are unaware or criminally ignorant of the Nazi Holocaust? Sixty-three percent don’t know that six million Jews were murdered during World War II. So, I guess that explains this ridiculous question about the infamous German dictator.
In what world is including Adolf Hitler in a leadership quality analysis a good idea? That question appeared on an eighth-grade assignment at Mount Vernon School, a private institution in Atlanta, rating Hitler as a “solution seeker” (via NY Post):
One question posed to students asked, “According to the Mount Vernon Mindset rubric, how would you rate Adolf Hitler as a ‘solution seeker’?”
A second question asked how students would “rate Adolf Hitler as an ethical decision-maker?”
For both questions, the students were given the option of selecting “Lacks Evidence,” “Approaching Expectations,” “Meets Expectations,” or “Exceeds Expectations” to describe the ruthless dictator.
The bizarre questions ignited outrage among parents — many of whom were concerned the queries were antisemitic by nature, according to the outlet.
Students at the private school also had issues with the questions, with one telling the outlet the assignment was “troubling” and could be seen as glorifying the warmongering totalitarian leader.
[…]
The principal of Mount Vernon, Kristy Lundstrom, wrote in a statement that 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.”
“Immediately following this incident, I met with the School’s Chief of Inclusion, Diversity, Equality, and Action, Head of Middle School, and a concerned Rabbi and friend of the School who shared the perspective of some of our families and supported us in a thorough review of the assignment and community impact.”
What a parade of horribles, and it’s almost comical that the principal ran like a scared wombat to the DEI office, which I thought, right or wrong, was supposed to snuff out garbage like this. Some students conceded that Mount Vernon likes to engage students in thinking outside the box and developing critical thinking skills. The only thing they succeeded in, and this is an unintentional consequence, is that the question appears to have been met with revulsion by the student body.
Yet, since this was mentioned, Hitler decimated Germany and was responsible for the bloodiest and most destructive war in human history. And we’re going to rate his abilities as a “solution seeker”? How is this even a critical-thinking exercise?
