Teacher Asks Students To Plan a Terrorist Attack

Tired of looking at an endless parade of dioramas, an Australian teacher had her class plan a terrorist attack that would "kill as many innocent Australians as possible." "The teacher, with every best intention, was attempting to have the students think through someone else's eyes about conflict. I think there are better ways to do that. ... This is not what we expect of professional educators," said Sharyn O'Neill, director-general of the state's Department of Education.

Comments

Re:How do you anticipate weak points

[Kell Bengal]

And you know what? We should have students thinking about exactly those kinds of things. They would gain more insight into what make some societies dysfunctional. Such instruction would come with discussion of the ethical implications of all those acts - as is the case with any social studies course. Certainly, by thinking about potential threats, what makes a threat credible and what can be done to reduce risks, students learn to cope with a world in which the TSA thinks binary explosives are dangerous but lets any fool take a laptop full of explosive batteries onto a plane.

Re:Promote this teacher!

[shermo]

Really? Get some perspective. About 3000 americans were killed by terrorists in the past ten years. In that same period about 300,000 died from suicide, while about 350,000 died on the roads.

If you dedicate 2 hours to 'terrorism danger' in a school year, you should dedicate 3 months to suicide and traffic safety.

I'm not in anyway trying to belittle the emotional impact of 9-11, but in terms of "thing[s] that these young people might experience" you'd be better off putting your efforts elsewhere.