Tennessee teachers stage fake gunman attack

[deadparrot]

Source: Associated Press

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - 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.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18645623/

[mcscajun]

1. You don't experiment with children. Period.

No psychologist or psychiatrist, had one been consulted, would ever have condoned this.

Idiots. x(

[kurth]

2. Big lawsuit coming

Yep. Idiots.

[rucky]

15. I got the blue eyes/brown eyes thing done to me as a kid.

it was a total mind fuck.

[mcscajun]

29. Exactly. And so was this.

x(

[dave_p]

3. I doubt it was an experiment

They were most likely trying to show them what to do if it happened. They got it wrong, big time.

But how sad that teachers should even consider such things necessary. That's what's really f'd up.

[tanyev]

6. Inspired by the many right wingers who were berating the Va Tech

students for not "fighting back", no doubt. Highly irresponsible to spring something like that on kids that young.

[BadgerKid]

10. if there are such RWers...

shouldn't they be volunteering to be a ground troop :eyes:

[tanyev]

11. Excellent idea.

Boortz, others blame VA Tech victims for not fighting back

In the April 18 edition of his daily program notes, called Nealz Nuze and posted on his website, nationally syndicated radio host Neal Boortz asked: "How far have we advanced in the wussification of America?" Boortz was responding to criticism of comments he made on the April 17 broadcast of his radio show regarding the mass shooting at Virginia Tech. During that broadcast, Boortz asked: "How the hell do 25 students allow themselves to be lined up against the wall in a classroom and picked off one by one? How does that happen, when they could have rushed the gunman, the shooter, and most of them would have survived?"

In questioning the actions of Virginia Tech students involved in the April 16 incident, Boortz joined the ranks of various commentators, including National Review Online contributor John Derbyshire, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Steyn, who also writes for the National Review, and right-wing pundit and Fox News analyst Michelle Malkin.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200704180007

[Rev. Mother Ramallo]

19. Every rightwinger...

...can't be a ground troop, so that argument is silly. I wish people would stop using it; the illogic in it is staggering--and it doesn't make us look very smart.

[pampango]

23. And we know that the RW inspired this because?

...we want it to be true?
...teachers are all RW'ers?
...it was a stupid idea and only the RW has those?
...progressives would never do anything to prepare kids for an attack, especially something that turned out to be a scary and pointless exercise?

Could the VT students have been expected to "fight back"? No. Will the next group be more likely to? Probably, though many factors will go into whether they do or not. Like passengers on a hijacked airplane, our attitudes are changed by history, so fighting back becomes a more "realistic" option, if you think you are going to be killed anyway.

[Danger Mouse]

4. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Way to traumatize the children, assholes.

[earthlover]

5. You don't have to have a brain to be an assistant principal, I guess

"We got together and discussed what we would have done in a real situation,” he said.

Well, Brainiac....what's likely to happen if these students experience a real situation is that they WON'T trust their teachers and they WON'T trust their assistant principal!!!

Why don't you cry wolf, while you are at it?

[OwnedByFerrets]

7. I would LOVE to see some

heads roll over this. IDIOTS!!!!!

[don954]

8. and here i am, thinking people couldnt possibly get any more fscked up

and someone goes and tops everyone else... WTF were they thinking???!!!!

[Solly Mack]

9. bunch of dunderheads

I'd be one ticked off parent

[pokercat999]

21. I'd be one ticked off parent with a good lawyer aka

John Edwards. What kind of idiots do this shit?

[earthlover]

12. school administrators sometimes lack brains....

I teach at a high school in Southern Virginia. Recently we had a rash of bomb threats. Four days in a row.

On the fourth day....the bomb threat said the bomb was set to go off at 1:30. So....there was a special announcement. Third lunch would be early. So, you guessed it, true to the foremost goal of the school...ie,....feed the students their school lunches.....the school was not evacuated until after the lunch was served. So we waited until about 1:05 to evacuate. Instead of getting out of the building a half hour earlier.

Think of it. A bomb threat serious enough to evacuate the school. But of course, the kids have to eat first. And of course everyone is supposed to TRUST the idiot who made the threat in the first place that the time for the bomb was really the time he said it was.

No....school administrators don't always act with responsibility or brains to protect the lives of their student body. Sometimes they just are dumb.

[devilgrrl]

13. Gee, I miss the good ole days of "Duck and Cover"

:eyes:

[JerseygirlCT]

31. In my Catholic elementary school, we used to get "mission movies"

we'd see these awful pictures of children and adults, with fingers and faces eaten away from leprosy. All that sort of thing -- starvation, etc. All to instill some sort of terrible, horrible guilt.

That worked, I suppose. Though I think compassion would be a far more useful emotion to invoke.

We were also often dragged in to fill in the crowd at funerals. I remember needing a bit of therapy (not common in those days) because of a very strong fear of death I developed at a young age. Wonder if there was a connection???

[Crunchy Frog]

I hope that the ensuing lawsuits will provide all involved

with a REALLY good learning experience.

[Crunchy Frog]

14. Oops, double post. n/t

[knight_of_the_star]

16. I forsee lawsuits in their immediate future

This will get very ugly.

[nealmhughes]

17. What sort of education degrees do these teachers and administrators have? Night correspondence?

Even an idiot knows these days that you do not do any "experiment" or research to any person without them signing full disclosure forms. This came out of the old "Turn the voltage higher" lab exercises which showed that even when the dial said "lethal voltage," still, people were willing to do it.

I don't know how they could have thought this was either legal or ethical. It wasn't. They will be severely reprimanded by the "system," I am sure.. . and even more so by the torts they must compensate their students for.

Good God, even as an academic librarian and a historian I was warned in grad school that anything involving actual living beings had to be vetted by a committee! We laughed and called it "Shock the monkey" statement in jest when some wanted to use personal interviews and surveys! Surveys have to be vetted! Interviews!

What makes the school there think they can just do something because it 'sounds good' and will be a 'learning experience'? Oh, it taught them something, all right, and it is not what they wanted taught, namely, that teachers and vice principals are assholes. Something I am sure many suspected, but now are assured to be the case.

[Giant Robot]

25. Actually you do not always need consent

To do "experiments" on humans. They are, however, few and far between occurrences that there is no consent gained before hand, and they always need to be reviewed and approved by a human subjects committee of some kind. These would be the types of experiments where the person's knowledge would have a severe impact on the study and where their lack of knowledge would not endanger them in any way. The Stanley Milgram experiments brought about a whole host of strict standards. What this school did would not have gotten past any type of initial paperwork let alone approved by any review board, it is just that atrocious.

[anotherdrew]

18. a very poor idea, they must have bad group-think for this to not have been vetoed by someone

They were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on a locked door.

After the lights went out, about 20 kids started to cry, 11-year-old Shay Naylor said.

and speaking of the 'conservatives' who wanted the kids to fight back... be glad one of them didn't have a gun in his book bag, take it out and shoot the hooded teacher 'in self defense'
After all, many sixth graders have brought guns to school right? (I wonder what the number of incidences actually is?)

[Oddball]

20. No one else knows, but...

..these "teachers" are all former members of the Bush Administration who thought going to war in Iraq was a "good idea."

Okay, that was stupid, but this mock attack was really, really, really stupid. I hope they all lose their jobs and have to return to the Bush Administration where their insanity won't be noticed. In fact, if they propose such an attack as a part of Homeland Security Preparation, I smell bonuses!!!!!

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

22. What the HELL were those morans thinking???

That is absolutely flat-out the most irresponsible, idiotic thing I have heard in in LONG time. I hope those responsible are arrested and charged with terrorism.

[nebenaube]

24. on the other hand...

This type of scenario was played out in my senior year of high school; in Texas, in 1979. The english class was discussing journalism when two terrorist raided the class and took a hostage. It was obvious that the Uzi's the "terrorists" had were just squirt guns and no-one appeared to be traumatized. Taken by surprise, yes but not traumatized.

When it was all over we learned the point of the exercise was to evaluate our powers of observation as each of us then had to write eye-witness accounts of the incident. The next day we analyzed and compare each other's accounts. It was bizarre how much the accounts of what had occurred the day before had differed.

[frebrd]

26. It would have been interesting....

if one of the kids had a firearm and shot someone in self defense.

Brilliant!

[nickgutierrez]

27. They need to be fired. Yesterday.

Everybody involved in planning and, for lack of a better word, executing this plan has to go, and now. I'm not generally prone to this kind of reaction, but this is so far beyond the pale that it's sickening.

At the very least, they had to tell the kids that it's a drill, or at least that it's not real in some sense. The fact that they not only didn't do that, but went out of their way to tell them it isn't a drill, means to me that they cannot keep their jobs.

[truthisfreedom]

28. The parents should have been contacted first, and the children should have been informed

that it was only a drill, because that's what any sane teacher would do. We had fire drills to practice remaining calm in case of a fire, and we had tornado drills to practice remaining calm in case of a tornado. They didn't pretend that there was a real tornado. That would have been completely counter-productive to the idea of practicing REMAINING CALM.

[JerseygirlCT]

30. Outrage says it.

I'm a peaceable person, but I'd have wanted to shout more than a few heads off if they'd put my child through that.

Personally, I think every adult involved in this lesson ought to be required to stand nighttime duty to all the kids, and be the one to wake up and soothe them through their nightmares.

That, and pay for the therapy.

Idiots.