I recently took a quiz in my online history class. It was about native americans and the beginning of European colonization and asked this question
"Which was not an aspect of Native American religious beliefs?
a. Their written religious text was called the Wicca. "
Am I the only one who finds this sort of question offensive or insensitive?
It bothered me so much that I actually wrote the teacher about it. Here's an excerpt from what I said that will hopefully help explain why I was offended:
"Not only does inserting this option into the question make finding the correct answer insultingly easy, especially for a college level class, but I have to wonder why the Wiccan religion is even brought up on a test or in a class that is meant to study events that took place hundreds of years before it was even conceived of, especially when it is very common knowledge that Wicca has nothing to do with Native Americans. Was it solely because of the book mentioning how shamans and medicine men were called "witch doctors" by European colonizers, because that is the only connection I can find for this, tenuous as it is(made even more so by the fact that Wiccans don't really have any set religious text. Not in the same vein as the Christian Bible anyway). To me it just seems like an insensitive and somewhat insulting question that's drawing a connection between two vastly different traditions that doesn't need to be there and feels very out of place."
I don't know, am I alone in thinking this sort of thing about question like that? Am I being overly sensitive? What do you guys think of it?
"Which was not an aspect of Native American religious beliefs?
a. Their written religious text was called the Wicca. "
Am I the only one who finds this sort of question offensive or insensitive?
It bothered me so much that I actually wrote the teacher about it. Here's an excerpt from what I said that will hopefully help explain why I was offended:
"Not only does inserting this option into the question make finding the correct answer insultingly easy, especially for a college level class, but I have to wonder why the Wiccan religion is even brought up on a test or in a class that is meant to study events that took place hundreds of years before it was even conceived of, especially when it is very common knowledge that Wicca has nothing to do with Native Americans. Was it solely because of the book mentioning how shamans and medicine men were called "witch doctors" by European colonizers, because that is the only connection I can find for this, tenuous as it is(made even more so by the fact that Wiccans don't really have any set religious text. Not in the same vein as the Christian Bible anyway). To me it just seems like an insensitive and somewhat insulting question that's drawing a connection between two vastly different traditions that doesn't need to be there and feels very out of place."
I don't know, am I alone in thinking this sort of thing about question like that? Am I being overly sensitive? What do you guys think of it?
