Georgia school sparks outrage for telling fourth-graders to imagine they were white settlers and write a letter to President Andrew Jackson to justify removing indigenous people from their land

 A school in Georgia has been forced to revise its class projects after complaints about an assignment that asked fourth graders to defend the forced relocation of Native Americans in the 1830s.

Students at Georgia Cyber Academy - a tuition-free, online, accredited public charter school - were given the task as part of their study of Andrew Jackson, president from 1829-37.

Jackson in 1830 signed the Indian Removal Act, which ordered Native Americans living around Tennessee to relocate to Oklahoma. An estimated 100,000 were forced to move, with 15,000 dying en route.

The students were set the task of writing two letters.

'Write a letter to President Andrew Jackson from the perspective of an American settler,' one assignment instructed.

Andrew Jackson, president from 1829-37, ordered that Native Americans be forcibly removed from their ancestral lands

'Explain why you think removing the Cherokee will help the United States grow and prosper.'

The second letter should be written from the opposite perspective.

'Write a letter to President Andrew Jackson from the perspective of a Cherokee Indian. Describe conditions on the Trail of Tears and their effects on your tribe.'

Jennifer Martin, a parent in Virginia, told Insider that she was angered by what she saw as 'prioritizing the feelings of settlers and colonizers as more important than actual, real history.'

She added: 'If this sort of content could happen at a state-funded Georgia charter school, it could easily happen in any public school, and I think people should be aware of how quickly we're devolving into this kind of atmosphere in American schools. 

'The truth of American history, and what happened to indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans and other people of color, shouldn't be whitewashed.'

This picture, The Trail of Tears, was painted by Robert Lindneux in 1942. It commemorates the suffering of the Cherokee people under forced removal

The school said that they had reviewed the material, and decided to change the lesson structure.

They said school leaders 'concluded this is not an appropriate question to be used in our classrooms.'

The school added: 'While there is often a benefit in asking students to consider all perspectives in a social studies class - and it should be noted that the next question in the series asked students to also argue from the opposite perspective (screenshot attached) - we believe there are more appropriate ways to teach this subject.'