Poor Judgement

[RedjackRyan]

MURFREESBORO, Tennessee (AP) -- 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 and lasted five minutes during the weeklong trip to a state park, said Scales Elementary School Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who led the trip.
"We got together and discussed what we would have done in a real situation," he said.
But parents of the sixth-grade students were outraged. (Watch student recount incident, mother react (javascript:cnnVideo('play','/video/education/2007/05/14/intv.tn.faked.attack.cnn','2009/05/13');) http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/.element/img/1.5/main/icon_video.gif (javascript:cnnVideo('play','javascript:cnnVideo(' play','/video/education/2007/05/14/intv.tn.faked.attack.cnn','2009/05/13');','2007/05/14');))
"The children were in that room in the dark, begging for their lives, because they thought there was someone with a gun after them," said Brandy Cole, whose son went on the trip.
Some parents said they were upset by the staff's poor judgment in light of the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech that left 33 students and professors dead, including the gunman.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/EDUCATION/05/13/faked.attack.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

[aabram]

Couldn't see the first link, but OMG.... why in the world did they need to do THAT :eek: Poor kids

[GodSistah]

They were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet.

This method didn't work for the kids at Columbine High School.

Still, however stoo-pid staff's judgement, I'm sure they meant well by the children. But I think they just open a pandora's box by highlighting the endless what ifs in the world.

~Andrea~

[aabram]

Way too many of those, Andrea..... Our Society seems to be getting so much more pessimistic, don't you think?????

Annabel

[Darlene]

Yea, I read about that last night. It must have been horrible for those poor kids. Some of them , probably most of them, will be traumatized for the rest of their lives. What were those teachers thinking.........That's the problem they weren't thinking or didnt have the capacity to think about the repercussions of their actions. Poor Kids.....
Peace, Darlene

[ponytail]

This is one of the sicker things I've ever heard, not to mention one of the dumbest. It's like a very cruel practical joke (and we know those can sometimes scar a kid for life). If I were the parents, I'd sue.

[Dee]

Congratulations to these staff members for needlessly traumatising their students. I do hope someone with more intelligence will step in and do trauma followup with them.

[DaveM]

A couple of them have been suspended, apparently. Until June 1st. A rather trivial response to a very bad idea that will have some of those kids looking over their shoulders for a long time to come.

The present climate of hysteria is not only having psychological effects on many, but providing a cash cow for opportunists. The purveyors of metal detectors for schools are raking it in....to my knowledge, there has been no in-depth study of how much good any of these have accomplished since they became fashionable. One of the lesser-known facts in America is that schools overall have a far lower incidence of violent crime--this being largely because they are full of kids who, with a few well-publicized exceptions, tend to behave themselves far better than adults.

A school district just a few miles from me just approved over $450,000 to install "state of the art security equipment", including cameras for the hallways and lord knows what else. The odd thing is that the district in question has never had any sort of security problem. However, it will get the kids used to being under constant surveillance I suppose.