So, I guess I understand your perspective and if your pretext that slavery ended were true, I guess I can understand why you’d think the school was responsible for the ‘reliving’ of the trauma, etc.
However, I don’t agree that slavery ended in the first place. Its not the same, but changing the methods or the way we justify something doesn’t make it a different something. We still have slaves in the US. The 13th Amendment made it legal to have slaves when the slave was convicted of a crime. Hence, mass incarceration.
Children don’t learn the way you think they do either. Children don’t learn by being told. They learn by being shown. How a teacher acts towards their students is picked up by the child. How other adults in the child’s life act is picked up by the child. If we want our children to grow up and be a certain way, we need to figure out what way that is and then decide who is going to set the example for the children.
Education about slavery does not on its own make children view others differently. How the adults around the children behave has a much bigger affect.
Basically, I think it would be helpful for you to learn more about slavery in the US and how it never ended, but simply changed. Then, if I were you, I’d research and read about modeling behavior for children and how educating (age appropriately) about the original shape and form of slavery in the US does not in and of itself perpetuate inequality, pain and racism.
Good luck.
