Posted on 04/02/2008 3:27:59 AM PDT by Freelance Warrior
A group of third-graders plotted to attack their teacher, bringing a broken steak knife, handcuffs, duct tape and other items for the job and assigning children tasks including covering the windows and cleaning up afterward, police said Tuesday.
The plot by as many as nine boys and girls at Center Elementary School in south Georgia was a serious threat, Waycross Police Chief Tony Tanner said.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
One of the little angels was scolded by the teacher for standing on a chair.
kids will be kids
Nobody puts Baby in a corner!!
Ping.
Another article said there were a total of 13 kids in the class, and that article said 11 of them were involved in the plot. This article says 9 have been disciplined, so perhaps the other two had insufficient involvement to warrant discipline. At any rate, we’re talking at least 2/3rds, and maybe over 4/5th of the students in the class, who were eager to harm this teacher. I think school officials should be focusing on the teacher’s behavior more than the conspiring students’. Something has to be very wrong with how a teacher has been treating her young students, for a solid majority of them to want to do serious harm to her in response to her “scolding” a single student.
> Something has to be very wrong with how a teacher has been treating her young students, for a solid majority of them to want to do serious harm to her in response to her “scolding” a single student.
I respectfully disagree. Many times when I was a kid our class would be in a state of anarchy, and many times the teacher would go running out of the clas screaming and in tears down to the principal’s office. Nothing wrong with the teacher — we were just being little rat-bags.
As I see it, this incident is merely an escalation from “the good ol’ days”: the little rat-bags have had the benefit of violent tv and video games to give them ideas that we could never have dreamed up, that’s all.
In the good ol’ days incidents like this were resolved by the vice-principal and 8 strokes of the cane for all hands on deck. It is a shame the school does not have that remedy available to them today.
To give full credit to the kids, at 8 years old somebody amongst them did some pretty careful planning. There is a leader-in-the-making there.
It’s the advance planning that makes me think there’s something wrong with the teacher. It’s easy for a group of kids to get stirred up spontaneously and go ahead and act while in their initial rush of excitement. But this involved at least an overnight break (maybe even longer, as it’s not clear when the “scolding” incident occurred). Most 8-9 year olds can’t even remember from one day to the next what they were excited about the day before. They’re also prone to forgetting to take their lunchbox or lunch money to school with them. But a majority of this class remembered and still cared enough the next morning, to bring their assigned weapons and tools for the attack. If was a parent of a child in this class (perpetrator or not), I’d be asking tough questions about the teacher.
> It’s the advance planning that makes me think there’s something wrong with the teacher.
You’ve got a good point. The planning is quite impressive and, as you say, at least one night would have passed: it wasn’t spontaneous.
It would be interesting to find out whether any of the kids complained about their teacher to anyone (parents &tc) before the event. That is what I’d expect normal kids to do if there was something wrong with the teacher.
That said, it’s difficult to imagine the teacher being in any real danger. 8 year olds are still pretty small. Even in angry swarms of nine or more, how would they overpower an adult? Their plan lacks a sense of realism.
Well, depending on the size of the 8-year-olds. I’ve ran into quite a few who weigh more than I do (although I’m probably still stronger), and I’ve even been physically pulled to the ground by a couple very strong and determined 6-year-olds in a non-aggressive situation. So, given nine of your ‘average’ 8-year-olds and your average female teacher, and stuff like handcuffs and duct tape, I’d say the kids actually stood a chance of hurting the teacher.
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