Olivia Wilde: Georgia school asks 4th graders to write letter to Andrew Jackson on how Removal of Cherokee helped U.S. grow and prosper

Assignment asks students to write from the perspective of an American settler. 

On Jan 19, 2022, Jennifer C. Martin, a senior contributor to Olney Magazine, shared a photograph on Twitter that displayed a question posed to fourth grade social studies students. Martin said the image is of an assignment given to a friend’s child. 

Martin told Native Viewpoint via email that the school is Georgia Cyber Academy, an online charter school.

The assignment was titled: Writing Prompt, The Trail of Tears and proposed the following:

Write a letter to President Andrew Jackson from the perspective of an American settler. Explain why you think removing the Cherokee will help the United States grow and prosper.

After seeing the assignment, Martin tweeted, “(M)y friend’s kid’s school in Georgia sent homework with this question.”

my friend’s kid’s school in Georgia sent homework with this question pic.twitter.com/pSFhJ0Ucvz

— Jennifer C. Martin (@notreallyjcm) January 20, 2022

After posting the image, Martin saw her post go viral. At the time of this writing, three days after the initial tweet, the post has over 4,100 retweets, 2,435 quote tweets and over 29,000 likes.

Martin says she posted the tweet in hopes of bringing awareness to the homework assignment meant for fourth graders. She also said her friend was shocked at the assignment.

“I think my friend shared it in our moms’ group because she was so shocked that she didn’t know how to answer and wanted advice as to what to do,” Martin wrote in the email.

“I shared it publicly because I wanted people to know this is going on in state-funded schools, and how dangerous the anti-CRT (critical race theory) rhetoric and laws are, and what kind of lies it leads to when discussing history. I’m also a parent, and I would be horrified to learn my kids were getting assignments like that.”

President Andrew Jackson’s legacy

President Andrew Jackson, a United States leader that owned approximately 150 slaves at the time of his death, was a key figure in the creation of the Indian Removal Act. In 1829, Jackson was inaugurated as the seventh president. 

Within just a few weeks, Jackson set into motion the policies that saw the removal of Native people from Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and Mississippi and included tribes such as the Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, Chickasaw and Creek. 

In 1830, Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which gave the federal government power to begin the forcible relocation of thousands of Native people westward. 

Jackon’s massive removal policies resulted in what Native people call the Trail of Tears. More than 15,000 Cherokees were forced to travel to present day Oklahoma on foot. Over 4,000 died on the journey.

The farms owned by Cherokee people — that were left behind — were taken by white settlers without compensation to the Cherokee… More

Olivia Wilde in ‘Third Person’

American actress Olivia Wilde was born Olivia Jane Cockburn on March 10, 1984, in New York City but was raised in Washington, D.C. Olivia is a graduate of Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and attended Gaiety School of Acting in Ireland. She made her film debut in the movie “The Girl Next Door,” but she is most famous for her role as Alex Kelly on the hit Fox series “The O.C.” 

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