Video: Utah middle school apologizes for terror-recruitment poster assignment

Bad timing? Sure, but exactly when would the timing of this assignment been good? KUTV in Salt Lake City first reported this middle-school assignment yesterday evening, when parents complained that their children were performing tasks like, oh … Googling ISIS recruitment propaganda. Some parents found out only after their teenagers had completed their work:

Advertisement

The front page of the project lists “eight reasons why young Muslims join ISIS”. The back page requires students to then draw a “terrorism propaganda poster.”

“She was just very enthusiastic and wanted students to understand that propaganda is not good,” said Hiskey, who admitted it was a first-year teacher and the assignment had not been approved.

2News got a phone call from an anonymous parent who was concerned that his 14-year-old son, who received the assignment, would research terrorist propaganda online and end up on a federal terrorist watch list.

KTSU also reported on the assignment, this time with a parent and student going on the record. In this case, the student actually did search the Internet for information on ISIS recruitment:

Do first-year teachers make mistakes? Sure, and most of them shouldn’t carry overly onerous consequences. But this really calls into question the teacher’s judgment, and may have put some of these students at real risk — and not just from the FBI, either. ISIS and other terror groups actively recruit teenagers for radicalization on the Internet through web sites and social media, the kind of content to which this kind of research might lead students. It runs the risk of teaching propaganda can be dangerous by putting curious and immature minds in danger of being affected by it. How could any adult, let alone a certified educator, possibly miss that risk?

Advertisement

Besides, if one wants to teach how propaganda is bad, instructors don’t need to look overseas. They can just point the students to the college campuses here in the US that many of them will end up attending. Let’s hope the parents of those students become as attentive as these Salt Lake City parents were this week.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on HotAir Videos

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement