Cambridge Student's Homework On Imperialism Sparks Outrage

CAMBRIDGE, MA — A high school senior from Cambridge was appalled when she saw her younger sister's history assignment Tuesday, so she posted it on social media for others to see.

Cece Walsh, a freshman at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School was working on an assignment asking students to read a text about the colonization of Africa then list both the "positive effects of imperialism" and the "negative effects of imperialism," when her sister took a photo of her sheet and uploaded it to Twitter.

Cece, 15, had left the positive side of the chart blank while listing multiple negative effects on the right side of the chart. Underneath the table, she wrote, "I think that asking us to identify positives of imperialism, something that killed thousands and contributed to slavery, is extremely undermining and disrespectful to people whose ancestors were murdered because of colonization."

The tweet has since gone viral, garnering almost 200,000 likes, over 18,000 retweets, and hundreds of responses and replies from people.

Following her sister's lead, Calla posted the picture with a post that followed saying: "forcing students into the mental exercise of justifying/rationalizing genocide because of its supposed 'positive effects' itself perpetuates genocide and indoctrinates them into supporting an imperial war machine." Another post followed, "and to be clear, this is a public high school in one of the most 'progressive' cities in the US — Cambridge, MA. it's not just Republicans banning [critical race theory] that are revising history — racist, imperialist revisionism it is a key objective of the *entire* US education system.

Cambridge Public Schools issued a statement Tuesday night saying they try to teach students in a "holistic way while we endeavor to analyze historical events from as many perspectives as possible in order to better understand the impact and implications of world events on affected people."

"The activity was a note taking exercise as students read through a chapter in the Age of Imperialism unit designed to spark a conversation and to teach students how to critically think about how imperialism is written about, " a spokesperson from Cambridge Public Schools added.

According to the statement, the textbook being used in the class, called Age of Imperialism predates the 2018 state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's History and Social Science standards, but fits the state's standards and is part of a broad range of materials students receive, including from Facing History and Ourselves, a group that focuses on genocides.

"It is important that our students learn about varying perspectives so that they can form their own opinions." The statement said, adding that "the person who shared the tweet lacked firsthand knowledge about the context of the lesson and the class discussion."

Cece says she first got upset doing her homework assignment because she felt like the reading assigned to her seemed to downplay the killing of African people while stealing their land, by using terms like "obtained land" or "took control."

Calla posted a newer tweet, saying Cece had raised concerns about the assignment to her teacher during class. She said her teacher agreed, and said he was teaching the text because it was part of the state's curriculum, but he planned to introduce other texts with different perspectives soon.

Many comments surrounding the tweet had others bringing up instances where they also had to rationalize whether slavery was "good or bad." While others say there wasn't an issue with the assignment, saying "It's an assignment to teach critical thinking," and shouldn't be overthought.