MUKILTEO—Kamiak High School students got a taste of classroom politics a couple weeks ago when they were asked to provide evidence justifying claims that the 45th President of the United States, Donald J Trump, is a “fascist.”
According to Kamiak High School Principal Stephen Shurtleff, an AP Government and Politics teacher asked students to evaluate quotes from political leaders claiming former President Trump is a fascist and give evidence the claims are “possibly” correct.
Just days prior, Vice President Kamala Harris had called Trump a “fascist” at a CNN town hall in Pennsylvania, along with Trump’s longest-serving chief-of-staff John Kelly who warned Trump fits “the general definition of a fascist.”
In the assignment, Kamiak students were asked to “1) define fascist (fascism) 2) provide evidence that Harris and Kelly’s assessment is possibly correct,” according to Principal Shurtleff.
A former Kamiak High School alumnus reached out to the Mukilteo School District regarding the assignment, which he deemed completely inappropriate.
“My recommendation is to be proactive and demonstrate to the community that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated rather than waiting and demonstrating that you will only take action when pressure is applied,” the former student said.
The Mukilteo School District gave a prompt and strong response.
“Something like that does would [sic] NOT align with district policies or practices,” the district wrote on its Facebook page the morning of Friday, November 1.
Shurtleff has provided the assignment students were given for transparency.
- “Last night, on a CNN town hall, Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris dropped…An F-bomb…That’s right. She called Donald Trump a FASCIST”
- “Ms. Harris is not the only notable person who, in the past week or so, has dropped this F-bomb. Former President Trump’s former chief-of-staff, (and retired Marine Corp General), John Kelly also labeled Trump a fascist. Trump’s response to Kelly “Thank you for your support against a total degenerate named John Kelly, who made up a story out of pure Trump Derangement Syndrome Hatred! John Kelly is a LOWLIFE, and a bad General, whose advice in the White House I no longer sought, and told him to MOVE ON!”(from Fox News) [this quote was presented in full in the prompt]
- Assignment #2 for today: On a piece of 8.5”x11” lined notebook paper, 1) define fascist (fascism) 2) provide evidence that Harris and Kelly’s assessment is possibly correct.
Some students requested to disprove Harris’s and Kelly’s allegations instead, which Shurtleff claims the teacher granted.
“So far as I could find, no students refused to participate in the activity,” Shurtleff said.
“I did not find that students’ grades would be impacted at all by which position they chose to explore for the assignment,” he added.
As of Friday, grades for the assignment had not been released, but Shurtleff maintained that all students “received full credit for accurate use of evidence.”
