Virginia 11-Year-Olds Quizzed On Trophy Wives And Boy Toys

HOPEWELL, VA — Parents of Hopewell, Virginia, middle school students as young as 11 were angry Monday after they saw their children’s “Family Quiz” homework assignment from a Family and Consumer Sciences teacher. "Trophy wife," "toyboy," "affair" and "mistress" were among the correct answers to some of the questions on the worksheet, which the school district said the teacher downloaded from the internet and included in her teaching plan without getting the required go-ahead.

School officials learned of the assignment after parents posted the quiz on Facebook. In a statement, district Superintendent Melody Hackney said officials “immediately began to investigate” the issue and that the “content was not a part of the current and approved curriculum for this course nor was it in any way an appropriate learning tool for middle school aged children.”

The teacher didn’t include the assignment in weekly lesson plans that are subject to review and approval, Hackney said in the statement

Tara Sample, who posted her 11-year-old daughter’s worksheet on Facebook, told WTVR-TV that “no one in the school system needs to be teaching my daughter what a mistress is or a trophy wife or a boy toy.”

“It’s inappropriate for school. Period,” Sample said. “We send our kids there to learn math, reading, science and history not to learn this other stuff that goes on in the world that they eventually going to learn anyways."

The quiz appears to have been downloaded from a site that offers resources for students learning English as a second language. Many of the questions were innocuous and concerned how to refer different people in families, but the ones the parents said were over the top included:

Question: What do you call it when a married person has a relationship with someone else?
Answer: An affair

Question: What do you call a married man's girlfriend?
Answer: Mistress

Question: What do you call the much younger boyfriend of an older woman?
Answer: Toyboy [sic]

Question: What do you call the much younger and beautiful wife of an older, wealthy man?
Answer: Trophy wife

After her initial post on Facebook, Samples said she doesn’t think the teacher should be fired and she’s “not mad” at her, but said she doesn’t understand why she gave the quiz to sixth and seventh graders.

Watch Now: Virginia Middle Schoolers Quizzed On Boy Toys and Trophy Wives

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