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Teachers Fake Gunman Attack
Anti_Climax writes "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.
It'll be interesting to see what happens to these teachers after the charges brought against students in recent months."
Won't somebody please think of the children.
...this is undeniably domestic terrorism.
With fear of stating the obvious I'll say this: How could teachers show such bad judgement, maybe practising for this type of situation could be a valuable experience, but with professional help and advice as well as parental consent, otherwise it seems like professional suicide and being in the states certain to cause tons of lawsuits.
Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here.
Was it really smart to say it was not a drill? It sounds, you know, like crying "wolf"...
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Well, at least they have started their education in not trusting authority, and learning that those in authority will lie to you. This is one of the lessons that most people don't get, until much later in life.
Assume everyone is aware of this unfortunate story from a couple weeks ago. My suggestion is that these teachers and the principle do a little time of their own. In fact their sentence should probably be much harsher than the one given to the Chicago teenager. I think most parents would agree that we do halfway expect the teachers and administrators of that school to act more or less like responsible adults.
Deja Moo: The distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before.
How can they be so stupid? These kids won't trust teachers ever again ... and they'll probably have trouble with authority figures for the rest of their lives.
I say we take the asshats responsible for this and lock them in the school's auditorium with all the angry parents and let the asshats see how it feels to fear for their lives.
If you feel so inclined, go ahead and let the school know what you think about this ...
t ml
http://www.cityschools.net/schoolsites/se/index.h
Scales Elementary Telephone (615) 895-5279
While I read this article and think "Well, that was fucking stupid." I have to wonder if there needs to be a school-sanctioned version of this concept in place.
I grew up in US/USSR Cold War times and spent a few schoolday hours a year huddled in the fallout shelter basement during drills. We also had tornado, flood and fire drills. What fun.
Seems to me that as shootings get more prevalent it might be a good idea to have drills to limit deaths from mass panic.
It'll be interesting to see what happens to these teachers after the charges brought against students in recent months.
No it won't. Not much will happen to them. Unlike the student who was arrested a while ago for completing his essay assignment as sked, these teachers will not be arrested. At best they may be fired after a couple months of looking in to it. They will probably only get a slap on the wrist. Don't forget that America in not interested in protecting children. This is a perfect example. By pulling this stunt, the teachers were able to scare the kids and permanantly brand the image of terrorists into the Children's minds. It doesn't matter that the thing turned up to be a hoax, the less educated/experienced of the kids will live with fear for quite a while, perhaps their whole lives. The teachers are acting much as the rest of America acts. It more important to mold children into the "American Cog" than to treat them fairly, or to give them an education. I mean, after all, what about the terrorists?
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Gotta start teaching them to be scared at an early age, y'know...
This guy's the limit!
If all those pesky zero tolerance rules get used, there should be a lot of fired teachers. Even without the zero tolerance rules, there should be a lot of fired teachers. I'm old enough to remember the nuclear "hide under the desk" drills, but they were always clear it was a drill.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Doing a drill where students are taught what to do and try to react in a controlled environment might be reasonable. Whether or not the underlying idea has merit, training has to be right to have value. Executing a drill for the purpose of finding out how kids will respond is just sick amusement.
Telling the kids that it wasn't a drill and they had to fear for their lives was counter productive at best. The teachers and administration that were involved in this should all be locked up. The purpose of this act was to terrorize the children. At a minimum, each person involved should be charged with one count of child abuse for each child affected by this incredibly retarded action. The closest any of them should be to a child for the rest of their lives is asking "do you want fries with that?"
When an adult does it, it's "poor judgment;" when a student does it, it's "a potential threat that must be dealt with seriously."
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Because in about five seconds Jack Thompson will emerge from his hole and say that the teachers in question trained for this fake attack by playing Doom and Counter Strike.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
Did anyone *ACTUALLY* think of the children before they decided this was a good idea?!?
Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?
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Arrange for some convincing actors armed with high-quality toy weapons to threaten the idiot teachers who did this, in some time and place where they aren't expecting it. See how "educational" they find it.
You know, some decades ago... before Columbine, before the year 2000 incident when what's his name shot coworkers at Edgewater Technology, and I believe before incidents in post offices made the phrase "going postal" part of the language... on one Halloween I thought it would be funny to wear a Halloween mask at work. It was a corpse-like mask that fit over my head. Apart from the mask, I was wearing my ordinary work clothes. I sort of scrooged down behind my computer monitor. I waited for a couple of coworkers to walk buy, then slowly stood up, saying nothing.
Let me tell you, I was completely taken aback by the intensity of the moment of terror that evoked in my coworkers. The unspoken thought was that people don't wear masks unless they're robbing a bank, or something. I immediately took of the mask, apologized profusely, never did it again. I wasn't fired, lectured, or disciplined, but those coworkers were cool toward me for some time. I realized I'd made a serious goof.
They were adults. It was Halloween. I did not have any weapons. I didn't jump out. I didn't say anything: not "Boo!", not "stick 'em up," or anything suggesing violence.
And for a fraction of a second--my colleagues were in fear for their lives. Only a fraction of a second, but that's the effect of doing something like that.
I can't begin to imagine the effects of a staged mock attack by adults on eleven-year-old-kids lasting for five minutes. That's not a short period of time to be in fear for one's life.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
And the accompanying fear-mongering only enhances the probability of such attacks in the future.
Still, in terms of number of lives saved, the resources would be better spent on educating kids about things like basic traffic safety, good nutritional habits, and not sniffing paint.
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They could never pull that off in NY... Those kindergarteners don't play that!
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Had the students been taught to fight back. Since they were not told it was a drill, it could have been quite a sight with 60 little ninjas armed with pens, rulers and flying calculators. Not a pretty sight to say the least...
Here's a statement from the school administrators from the elementary school's homepage:
http://cityschools.net/schoolsites/se/index.html
While I agree that the administrators on the field trip might have been a bit boneheaded in pulling this particular prank in light of recent events, it doesn't sound like this was any kind of "drill" at all. They also seem to have done some kind of follow-up with the students' parents after the trip.
My (catholic) high school had a set of procedures for this sort of thing. A former principal of the school was a priest named Father Schmidt, who had passed away about a decade prior. So, when they paged "Father Schmidt" to the office, it was a signal that there were hostages being taken somewhere in the building. We were to close and lock doors, kill lights, open windows, and huddle against an internal wall - presumably, so that we could be seen and counted from outside the building.
I remember one year, where they announced on Monday Morning that they would run the drill at some point on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. They paged, we hid, then police officers cleared each room and told us what a wonderful job we had done. That was that.
A planned drill is fine, these procedures should be rehearsed. But, what if one of these kids tried to be a hero? Someone really could have gotten hurt. These teachers need to be sacked, at the very lease.
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
Isn't it interesting that schools need parental approval for sex education but no approval for violence education?
Unfortunately for them, even their own version seems crazy, insane, evil, outrageous, and inexplicable. According to them, it was customary for the teachers to perform what they call "typical campfire pranks" on the children. That's no way to treat pre-teen children. So-called "pranks" from adults are absolutely unacceptable, because children do not have enough experience to judge when a situation is absurd.
faking attacks is good training in case of a real attack. when i was in the army we were the victims of mock ambushes and raids all the time in the field... often at night or when we stopped to piss. it taught us to always be on alert. my second week of basic training i learned to stop pissing mid-stream. by the 6th week my default reaction to being awakened was to choke whatever woke me up. even now that i have been out of the army for 10 years i occasionally wake up from nightmares and look around for my M16. i am sure these kids have received the same benefits, and in their formative years no less.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
In grade 7, my teacher staged a crazy gunman attack in the classroom - mind you this was nearly 20 years ago now...
First thing in the morning, he's starting up a lesson, and some guy barges into the room ranting about how he'd been cut off in traffic, and how angry he was. After a few shouted exchanges, he pulled a cap gun out of hit pocket and "shot" my teacher - though he got excited and "shot" himself in the foot instead. Then he ran out of the room.
I think the point of the lesson was to teach us how to be good eyewitnesses or something. I don't remember if my teacher had a fake blood pack or not - could be that my memory has embellished it.
We weren't cowering under our desks, but the accuracy of our eyewitness accounts was shockingly bad even seconds after the event.
Mr. Selvig was a great teacher.
So you are claiming that duck and cover is equally as bad a choice, as someone taking a direct approach and stopping the shooter? Seriously?
I think he was suggesting more to get the hell away from the area via a safe route, or otherwise get somewhere the gunman can't get to (i.e. blockade yourself into a room much like the students that survived Virginia Tech did).
Right. That's how at least one of the professors got killed, by him shooting through the door. Better chance than sitting and waiting, sure, but so much less effective than if he'd had the means to effectively defend himself.
Both your suggestions are prime examples of what the person you were responding to meant when he mentioned lemmings - people who just sit and die and people who, well, go and die. Both are equally stupid when there's another more blatantly sensible option - get to safety and let well trained police/soldiers wearing bulletproof vests and armed with flashbangs deal with the guy with a gun.
In the case of VT, there wasn't a _get to safety_ option, was there. The hallways were occupied by a gunman, the exits had been chained shut. Waiting for professional help is what got them killed. ONE teacher with a gun could have stopped it at something less than 32 deaths. Even knowing that his intended victims were allowed to carry if they so chose might have deterred his entire rampage - it was obviously directed at helpless people. If he didn't know his victims were forced by law to be helpless, maybe he wouldn't have started in the first place.
Lemmings aren't the ones fighting the killer and dying, lemmings are the ones dying while hoping that "well trained police/soldiers" will show up in time to save them.
A whole lot of realism right up front isn't always a good thing when you're training for contingencies. I could see the logic if the teachers had gone through an incremental training process with increasing realism and randomness. If their intent was to terrorize young kids while minimizing the learning value of the drill, then, Mission Accomplished!
Late 50's, early 60's, I think, my father was just starting out as a high school teacher. He taught psycology. His friend, who later became the Principal of the local middle school, helped him with a little "test" he planned - and it did involve a fake blood pack.
Actually, it was real blood. Pig's blood. Anyway....
It was test day, and on the test was a strange question, way down towards the end - "#36 What has just been released into your body?" Plan was to do something shocking and then ask them to answer question #36; correct answer is "adrenaline" of course.
So the students are quietly taking their test, my father sitting at his desk, when in walks his friend dressed as a mafia character; brim hat, dark glasses, pin stripes... He says, "You Smith?" as tho he doesn't know him, and then pulls out a (fake) gun, says, "Nobody give my kid an F and gets away with it," unloads some caps for the bang bang sound, my dad slaps his chest bursting the blood bag and falls dramatically behind his desk.
When retelling this story, my dad says that he was so nervous that he'd make a fool of himself, that his students were nearly adults (only seniors are allowed to take the psychology elective), and as he twitched a little behind his desk he thought he'd blown it because he didn't hear anything. No guffaws, no shrieking... nothing. So he jumps up expecting to tell them to answer question #36, but stops short when he sees the carnage in front of him.
Blood had splattered on three students in the front row. One girl, who caught a great deal of it, was in catatonic shock so med techs and an ambulance had to be called in. Big, bad football players had pissed their pants. Several had thrown up or passed out. Everyone, I mean *everyone* was seriously damaged. They did not complete the test, nor the rest of the school day.
He almost lost his job, but since he was new the administration chalked it up to being green and inexperienced. From then on he just uses a couple of firecrackers to get his kids to experience shock adrenaline and learn about that particular facet of psychology known as "fight or flight" - which is very different than "trauma" by any definition.
BUT DAMMIT I WILL DECIDE WHEN AND HOW MY 2 CHILDREN LEARN THIS! NOT YOU! NOT SOME ROGUE TEACHER!
Preventing unconscionable acts like this is not over protecting our children. Yes, children will face times of emotional distress and
They are children -they will quickly learn and know how to react and they will become stronger and stronger (if you have a family shaping those conflicts correctly, of course)
But this atrocity is not simply emotional distress or conflict it is NOT indicative of the type of emotional distress and situations that people face regularly as a part of life. This is a cruel subjection of children to a emotionally and psychologically TRAUMATIC experience.
You want to see what kind of damage this insanity, that you seem eager to justify, can do? Go and talk to the kids that were at Columbine. For that matter, why don't you look up and see what effect any of these school shootings have had? And pay close attention to those that occurred at elementary schools. And before you go and cite some post in this thread where 'Joe Bob' says that something similar didn't have any effect on him in no way precludes it from having a dramatic effect on others. Do just a tad bit of research before you open your mouth and utter uninformed and possibly damaging opinions. Skim over this article on emotional and psychological trauma. Read the common elements of a traumatic situation: 1) it was unexpected 2)the person was unprepared 3) there was nothing the person could do to prevent it from happening. A key here is that it doesn't have to be real threat to life but is perceived to be real. Look at the table of effects that this can have.
Are you advocating subjecting children to this? Or did you just knee jerk and spew a poorly thought out opinion taking an easily agreed to premise of not sheltering children from reality and using it completely inappropriately?
And if you want to be so arrogant as to challenge this material or these concepts surrounding the impact of traumatic events I'll be happy to introduce you to a couple war buddies that will set you straight. Or a couple professors I know in the Psych department who practiced child psychology for several years prior to teaching. I'm sure they could quickly point you to plenty of sound research (i.e. not baseless opinions) on this topic in addition to their own observations.
PREPARING my child for these situations is different from intentionally CREATING a NEEDLESS traumatic experience!! Why in hell would I purposefully traumatize them in a calculated way?!?! That's just sick, wrong and stupid.
This is a SCHOOL where I expect that teachers behave ETHICALLY and follow the mandate they have been given. They are there to provide knowledge and understanding of the world around them. And at times this means teaching students to be prepared for dangerous situations. But fire drills, tornado drills (historically bomb drills) are not used to scare the sh*&t out of the kids but to give them the practice at doing the things that will redu