Although slavery has been a part of history since the dawn of man, Progressives have convinced themselves that it existed only in America and only as to blacks.  Combining this historic blindness with excessive deference to student sensibilities reached peak wokeness in a Washington, D.C. elementary school.

Fifth-grade teachers at Lafayette Elementary School, as part of teaching about the Civil War and Reconstruction, asked students to show their understanding of the material by creating "living pictures," podcasts, or dramatic readings.

Problems arose, though, when some students asked others to...  Well, let's quote from CNN to grasp the full horror:

Some students of color were asked by their peers to play roles that are "inappropriate and harmful," including "a person of color drinking from a segregated water fountain and an enslaved person," the team wrote.

During classroom circles and small group discussions, [Principal Carrie] Broquard said, some students said they were uncomfortable with the roles their peers had asked them to play. Others, she said, had been unsure how to respond or stand up for their peers who were uncomfortable.

Responding to complaints, the principal sent a letter to families confessing that students "should not have been tasked with acting out or portraying different perspectives of enslavement or war."  The fifth-grade team added, "We deeply regret that we did not foresee this as a potential challenge in role playing so we could set appropriate parameters to protect students."

The school also took steps to respond to the student's emotional trauma:

In [Borquard's] letter, she said students who were directly affected have been meeting with the school's social emotional learning team and members of the administration to "process and talk through" the incident. The social emotional learning team and a racial equity committee at the school will work to ensure all assignments are "culturally sensitive and appropriate," she wrote.

The staff will participate in a full day of training on equity and race in January, and the school plans to create a diversity and inclusion committee, the letter stated.

"As the leader of the Lafayette school community, I am distressed this happened and saddened our students were hurt," Broquard wrote in the letter. "The voices of our students, their resilience and their compassion continue to inspire me to lead us all forward in a better way."

In addition to the school's mea culpas, the school district also apologized and promised action:

District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) called the lesson inappropriate and said the school was responding to the situation.

"We acknowledge the approach to learning that took place around this lesson was inappropriate and harmful to students," DCPS said in a statement to CNN.

"The school recognized its mistakes, addressed the matter with families, and is actively reinforcing values of racial equity across the entire school community. We support Lafayette Elementary as it nurtures young scholars to be models of social awareness and responsibility."

One really doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.  It's certain that the philosopher George Santayana, who famously said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," would strongly disagree with the school's attitude.

A real education would teach students that slavery has been an integral part of human existence since the dawn of time.  Indeed, it's so integral that it is still present today throughout the Middle East and Africa.  What makes Western civilization different is that the Enlightenment combined Judeo-Christian beliefs with ancient Greek reasoning to conclude that slavery is a moral wrong, a concept that culminated in America with a bloody Civil War.

Unlike the D.C. public school system, Jews around the world believe that it is important to remember the immediacy of slavery so that they never forget its evil.  That's why the Passover Haggadah has participants recite every year, "When we were slaves in Egypt."  The immediacy of this language is both a reminder of the sins of slavery and the wonders of freedom.  Perhaps Progressives could learn from that.