Utah school apologizes for ISIS propaganda poster project

A junior high school in Utah is apologizing to parents and students for an assignment where students were asked to create a propaganda poster for a terrorist organization like the Islamic State (ISIS).

Hiskey said the teacher was trying to teach the students about how propaganda can be inappropriate while they were talking about the Middle East. On the back, students were asked to draw a “terrorism propaganda poster”. It should be neat, colored, professional, etc. Information has been including [sic] to help you better uderstand what groups like ISIS want and why.

The students’ posters have since been torn up and discarded. One voiced concerns that their child might end up on a federal watch list after looking up websites tied to terrorism on the Internet in order to complete the assignment.

“In light of what happened in Paris, is that the reason for this assignment?”.

Annie Langston couldn’t believe her 14-year-old daughter Mikalia was given the assignment. “I feel a different assignment or report could’ve been chosen or a discussion in class about the tragic events”, she wrote, Fox reported. Hiskey said the assignment was given Wednesday by a first-year teacher to about 60 ninth-grade students in a world civics class. It was not approved by the school and was not a part of any official curriculum. No disciplinary action was planned against the teacher, who is apologetic and has met with school administrators, said Hiskey, who declined to provide the educator’s name.