Gwinnett Teacher Gave Nazi Homework Assignment

LAWRENCEVILLE, GA — Gwinnett County school officials are responding after a middle-school teacher gave sixth-graders an assignment in which they were to create mascots for the Nazi Party.

Gwinnett County Public Schools spokeswoman Sloan Roach said the assignment, at Shiloh Middle School in Snellville, was not approved by the school system.

The assignment "is not a part of the approved materials provided by our Social Studies department and is not appropriate and the school is addressing the use of this assignment with the teacher," Roach said in an email.

The teacher, who has not been publicly identified, gave the assignment on Monday and a parent brought it to the attention of the school system. (SIGN UP: Get Patch's Daily Newsletter and Real Time News Alerts. Or, if you have an iPhone, download the free Patch app.)

Jamie Brown told the Gwinnett Daily Post he was caught off guard when he saw his son drawing a picture of Adolf Hitler as part of the assignment.

"A mascot is designed to celebrate something," Brown said to the paper. "These are people who are responsible for the mass murder of millions of people we’re going to create a mascot for that?"

The students had been studying the rise of Nazism and the way the party used propaganda in the lead-up to World War II.

The assignment asked students to pretend it is 1935 and they have been tasked with creating a mascot to represent the Nazi party at political rallies. They were told to make the illustration colorful, give the mascot a name and explain why it was chosen to represent the Nazis.

Roach confirmed that learning about conflict and change in Europe before World War II, including the rise of Nazism and the party's use of propaganda leading to the Holocaust, is a regular part of Georgia's sixth-grade curriculum.

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