Pimps and Mobstaz in Your Local Schools

Imagine overhearing your 9-year-old son say the words “pimp” and “mobstaz.”

You’d probably think he heard those words from a friend at school, or from television.

Imagine your surprise when you realized your son was reading those words from his 4th grade homework assignment.

Last week, Vermilion Parish, Louisiana parent Brittney Badeaux was helping her son with his homework when she overheard him say the offensive words.

“I couldn’t believe it at first – hearing him read it to me,” she told Fox News. “So I looked at the paper and read the entire article. It was filled with Ebonics. It was really inappropriate for my child,” Badeaux said. “He doesn’t’ know what a pimp or mobster is.”

The assignment consisted of a worksheet with different contextual examples and takes on the word “twist.” There’s a paragraph on the dancing “The Twist” and tornadoes.  It also included a paragraph about “Twista” – a rapper with the group Speedknot Mobstaz who performs a song titled “Po-Pimp.”

Badeaux also expressed concerns about the school sending home a worksheet that intentionally misspelled words.

“I try to teach him morals and respect and to speak correctly,” she added. “It’s hard for a fourth grader to understand Ebonics when you’re trying to teach him how to spell and write correctly.”

School officials told the news site the lesson was considered age appropriate according to the new national Common Core standards and is aligned to fourth grade English standards.

Vermillion Parish Superintendent Jerome Payau said the “Po-Pimp” worksheet is designed to encourage discussion of “real world texts.”

“The Common Core curriculum, like it or not – we have to make our students successful,” he said, according to Fox News.

“Out of context, this word is inappropriate,” Puyau said. “However, within the Common Core standards, they do want us to discuss real world texts.”

The Common Core State Standards initiative is a plan devised by the nation’s governors and backed by the Obama administration to set a uniform standard for grades K-12. In practice, it will ensure that every child in the nation reaches the same level of learning. So far, 45 states have agreed to use Common Core – including Louisiana. It has encountered serious pushback from conservative lawmakers and parents who worry that the new standards aren’t rigorous, rollback states’ rights and teach inappropriate subjects.

Speaking of inappropriate subjects, last week a parent in Arizona raised concerns about an erotic novel that was assigned as a “Common Core aligned” 10th grade reading material.

Inappropriate language, erotic literature, Ebonics, misspellings, poor grammar, and fuzzy math – one has to wonder what else Common Core “standards” have in store for our children.