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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.
"So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself."
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War
I propose we ban the discussion and analysis of hypothetical terrorist attacks, military invasions, and network breaches because they're insensitive to victims of terrorism, veterans, and poor blokes like me who've had their medical records compromised.
Split them into two teams and have one try to defend against the threats, then have them swap. It would give a balanced view and require some thought. I'm sure the 'intelligence' ops around it would also prove interesting. "The terrorist cell was meeting behind the bike racks, so we infiltrated and bribed them for information with a couple of smokes."
Ah, my high school computer teacher didn't so much teach us how to break into computer systems, as much as challenge us to break into the school computer systems, and then disclose our methods. It was part of their ongoing security auditing and improvements.
It was a lot of fun. Starting with the library computers which had limited internet access and less-than-perfect policy controls. I remember using Netscape Navigator on one machine, to associate command.com as the default application for .wav files, then clicking through to a .wav file to get to a command prompt and wreak havoc. Years later we were breaking into the main school Unix network with ctrl-break's at susceptible points during the execution of scripts with elevated priveleges (which they rapidly fixed as a severe issue). Ahh great times. Alas, I was a mere hobbyist back then, and have trouble actually relating what I was dealing with at the time because I didn't really know... Fun times.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
OP is quite right: student obviously missed most of the lesson.
Terrorism has a few faces that can be taught about, including why people commit these acts, how they are committed, what we can do to prevent such attacks (acting on both the how and why questions), and the result of attacks.
Seriously thinking about how they are committed (from the linked article: "The task included choosing the best time to attack and explaining their choice of victims") can give great insight ways to mitigate such attacks, and dealing with them if they occur. Coming up with a terrorist attack plan is doing just that, it makes one think about how an attack could be done. It makes you look at it from the other side.
I know it can be challenging for a 15yo to actually go deeper in matter than the face value of what the teacher produces. It's out of their comfort zones. And if this student thinks that learning about terrorism (which imho should include THINKING about it) makes you a terrorist, then indeed he missed the point entirely. Stepping into the mind of a terrorist is a very good way to think about the matter, and if that student thinks that merely thinking about terrorist attacks, how they were done, how they could be done, and why they are done, makes him a terrorist then this student himself might need some urgent counseling to stop his terrorist tendencies.
And about WW2: in my history lessons I have learned quite a bit about tactics used, particularly related to the invasion of The Netherlands (my home country). About how the Jews were deported and killed. Why this was done too. How the Dutch helped rounding up the Jews. it doesn't make me a crazy statesman like Hitler at all, on the contrary even. The same for such a lesson on terrorism: it won't make children into terrorists.
It's good to see someone actually spoke to Brian Deegan, his story was being misused by the media to suggest he was angered and offended by the assignment.
Also that type of assignment is nothing new, especially in forensic science classes. When my daughter was attending HS in Oz (over a decade ago) she came home with an assignment to plot the perfect kidnapping/ransom crime. The teacher then selected several of these plots and the new class assignment was to use forensic methods to cath the fictional kidnapper. The upshot was that her teacher and I learnt that my daughter had a promising career as either a forensic scientist or a master criminal.
Most of her classmates also loved forensics, IMHO it's an entertaining and engaging way to teach science and critical thinking, which btw is the very thing that is lacking in the tabloid reporting of this story.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Every armed force in the western world operates an OPFOR type organisation for just this purpose. Often using tactics, vehicles and equipment expected to be used by foreign aggressors (I.E. a lot of Ex-Soviet and old US equipment that got sold on). Sometimes up to the point where a foreign allied force is acting as OPFOR.
As an Australian, I dont see what is wrong here. Frankly we could use more of this kind of out of the box thinking in the glorified day care system that is education. But unfortunately the NIMBY's wont have a bar of it.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I agree with the sentiment that the assignment is good for getting student brain activity going and for learning about critical thinking.
However, I've also worked with high school students and the opposing argument is not entirely without merit. There *are* those kids who don't understand sarcasm, don't follow even the most basic logical arguments and may not understand that discussing terrorism does not imply becoming a terrorist. Slashdot posters who breezed through high school should understand that many people barely passed (hell, many people fail).
And obviously, school administrators don't want to get the angry phone call from a parent "you're teaching my kid to be a terrorist!" so they have to say they don't support it even if they could care less.
First, I'm pretty sure a student who turns into an attacker doesn't need their teacher to tell them to think about how to attack.
Playing devil's advocate - this student may be too dumb to figure out a decent method of attack, and a much smarter kid or group of kids could provide him with a great plan.
which is totally what she said