Who thought this one up?

No, seriously! Who thought this was a good idea? And how did the kind of person who thought this was a good idea get a job teaching children?

“Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.The mock attack Thursday night was intended as a learning experience….” The report goes on to say “Some parents said they were upset by the staff’s poor judgment in light of the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech….” Truth be told, it was poor judgement in any event at any time!

What were the staff members trying to teach in this “learning experience”? How to whimper in fear? How to hide? Or maybe that one man with a gun can terrify over 60 students, who will offer no resistance to attack but will instead hide. Yeah, there’s a lesson we want them taking away from this incident, sure. They have shattered the trust of these students, and given the one kid who is maybe a little prone to violence anyway a very scary data point.

Even the Principal said this “involved poor judgment.” But she wouldn’t even say whether there would be disciplinary action taken against them. More importantly, she didn’t go the extra logical step, that people with “poor judgement” should not be teachers. Maybe she’s just planning to not renew their contracts — and seeing as it’s mid-May I can understand — but keeping people with “poor judgement” in a situation where they are in charge of students that they have personally terrified seems like a liability nightmare to me.

Follow up: from The Moderate Voice.

To wrap things up: myths about divorce include that very popular “half of all marriages end in divorce anyways” line; another item on the Fort Dix Six and media coverage thereof; a nice graph of worldwide obesity by nation courtesy of the Korea Times; and the Padilla trial (finally) begins.

2 thoughts on “Who thought this one up?”

  1. Padilla: “hangin’s too good fer ‘im, burnin’s too good fer ‘im; he should be cut into little pieces and buried alive…” (quote from the movie “Heavy Metal.”
    and let that not be used to discern MY opinion about the man – as I abstain from opinion making at this time… I suspect, though, that both man and government will be on trial here.)

  2. I believe it was President Harry Truman who said
    “If you would lay all the economists end to end
    they would point in every direction.”

    ‘Nuff Said from Texas.

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