A Virginia mother sounded the alarm about an assignment that tasked students to write an anti-gun essay.
Concerned parent Darcey Geissler told Fox News that the essay was “a poorly written, factually and legally inaccurate ‘essay,’ written by an adult parading as a child, being used to once again advance a political agenda.”
“When I was in law school, our first assignment on persuasive writing – a skill necessary to be a lawyer – was on whether or not a misspelling in a deed was sufficient to pass title,” Geissler wrote to the school principal in an email. “Not exactly a sexy or emotional issue. We were not handed Roe v. Wade, the 2nd Amendment, or climate change, even though we were law students with significant education and life experience.”
“The reason we were not given hot-button issues when first learning to write was because in order to learn persuasive writing, it is imperative that the skill not be clouded by the issue before the skill is learned,” the email continued.
In response to the parent’s complaint, a spokesperson for Fairfax County Public Schools told Fox News that the assignment “was given to students as part of a persuasive writing fifth-grade unit.”
“Students were asked to analyze this example essay from the neutral perspective of whether this piece of writing presented a convincing argument or not, and why. The school is working closely with the parent who complained about the assignment, so her concerns are addressed,” the spokesperson said.
Geissler, who has six children in her household, said that her son was very upset about the assignment given their family’s support of the Second Amendment.
“I have at least one other parent who’s gone through it and ripped it apart, both factually and for the writing,” she said. “We need to understand that these are children and as opposed to hiding behind them and trying to get our children to discuss issues that we don’t allow adults to discuss at parties. When was the last time you went to a party with mixed political views and said, ‘Hey guys, let’s talk about gun control, let’s talk about religion.'”
“Adults are unable to handle these issues,” she continued. “And so now as opposed to adults being required to talk about them, we are standing behind our children, using them as puppets and using them as a shield to take the attack. They are not equipped to handle these conversations. The school is not even providing balanced support for this.”
