A middle school science teacher in suburban Dallas has drawn the ire of parents over a homework assignment entitled “The Cocaine Trade: From Field to Street.”
The unidentified teacher is employed at Bear Creek Intermediate School in the Keller, Texas, reports CBS Dallas.
“I walked by and noticed that in big bold letters across the front of his assignment it said ‘COCAINE,'” parent Scott Pick.
Pick’s 11-year-old son is a sixth grader at Bear Creek Intermediate. The boy was home from school with strep throat — doing makeup work — when Pick noticed the content of the assignment, which is supposed to teach youngsters all about “Following a Sequence.”
“I felt like they were giving my kid a diagram of how to become a drug dealer,” Pick told the CBS station.
“I was shocked by it. It startled me. It took me aback for a second,” the father added. “I grabbed the paper immediately.” He said he told his son not to do the assignment.
The worksheet breaks the cocaine trade down into six easy, impressively detailed steps, as EAGnews.org notes.
First, drug cartels purchase coca paste from Colombian farmers for $950 per kilogram, the assignment explains.
The worksheet helpfully defines a cartel for curious sixth graders as “an international group that controls or tries to control the supply of oil, natural gas, drugs, or other articles of trade.”
Next, “drug labs” operated by cartels “turn the paste into powdered cocaine.”
For steps 3 and 4, cartels smuggle powder cocaine into the United States “by boat or plane” and sell it to large distributors “for $25,000 per kilo.”
“Small distributors buy cocaine from large distributors. Small distributors divide the cocaine into tiny amounts to sell ‘on the street.'”
Finally, “drug abusers buy small packets of cocaine from street dealers (sellers). Buyers pay $87 a gram (a thousandth part of a kilo). Value of a kilo of cocaine on the street: $87,000.”
The worksheet’s numbers — from the United Nations Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention back in 1997 — are likely a bit off. According to Alternet, a gram of cocaine costs can be had for the bargain price of $60 in the United States right now.
The homework assignment also informs suburban sixth graders that “rebel armies control the drug trade.” One particularly lucrative cartel “is said to make more than $500 million a year on the drug trade,” it adds.
Keller school district officials said they are investigating the assignment and will consider not using it teach 11-year-old kids about sequences in the future.
“Keller ISD takes the issue of drug abuse very seriously, and as such, allocates multiple resources to combat abuse through drug education and intervention,” the district said in a statement obtained by CBS Dallas. “The study sheet in question will be reviewed before being considered for future use. The district will continue its concerted efforts to review, remind, and revise drug educational material on a regular basis.”
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