School gave students bugs to eat as part of an assignment and they loved the 'eww' factor

Can you imagine being asked to write "Why America Should Be Eating Bugs" as a school assignment? Well, kids in a Utah school were given this writing assignment. According to the school's official website, “Students just wrapped up a unit on if bugs are a good source of protein or not which culminated in an extra exciting day where students could even try out a bug if they wanted to. Middle-schoolers loved the ‘ewww’ factor (and) many of them gave bugs a try (and even a few staff members!).”

With such a controversial assignment, parents had objections as well. Amanda Wright, whose daughter Saige attends Spring Canyon Middle School in Springville, even felt their kids were being indoctrinated into a "dark climate change religion" by assigning the essay mentioned above, as reported by TODAY. Wright and her daughter also recorded her conversation with educators. In Saige's video, a teacher told her that eating insects was a socially-aware choice. "How come we can't state our opinion of why Americans shouldn't be eating bugs?" Saige questions her teacher in the recording. 

"Because we don't have any evidence to support it," answered the teacher. "It’s kind of weird that I gave you a topic where there is only one right answer. We don’t want to eat bugs and it’s gross. But should we be eating bugs? Yeah, because we’re killing the world by raising cows and animals. So we need to just, not get rid of cows, but like, try to balance our diet so that not so much of our land is being used to raise cows, cause it’s killing the Ozone layer.” "So there's only one right answer for this essay and it's that Americans should be eating bugs," she said. "Everyone else in the world is eating them, it's healthy for the environment." 

A spokesperson for the school informed TODAY that students “really loved” the assignment. "It was a fun way to engage students in writing an argumentative essay, which is a core standard in language arts," added the spokesperson. "Students explored fact vs. opinion and how to determine what a valid source of information is to cite in their own writing. Students have been writing on a wide range of topics all term and one of the final projects was studying and writing about if Americans should be eating bugs for protein."

The teacher was recorded secretly by her student without her permission, according to the district spokesperson. "This student recorded this teacher and used only snippets of what she actually said and used them out of context," she said. "When the teacher realized there was a concern, the student was offered another topic of the student’s choice," said the spokesperson, adding, "When the teacher said there is only one right answer, she was referencing one particular article about this argumentative essay — not her own opinion."

As per the spokesperson of the school, the teacher purchased the "edible bugs" from a commercial website that stated they were "safe for consumption." Assigning the bugs as extra credit was "an afterthought," she continued. The choice of the assignment was somewhat controversial and for this reason, it generated heated debates within the school!