Posted on 05/13/2007 3:04:17 PM PDT by TornadoAlley3
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.
"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.
During the last night of the trip, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose. 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 locked door.
After the lights went out, about 20 kids started to cry, 11-year-old Shay Naylor said.
"I was like, 'Oh My God,' " she said. "At first I thought I was going to die. We flipped out."
Principal Catherine Stephens declined to say whether the staff members involved would face disciplinary action, but said the situation "involved poor judgment."
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Honestly,,,this post is not encouraging.
If you do not teach conservatism, or liberalism ( Marxism, really), then what **are** you teaching? Nothing?
Also,,,When did children have the ability or experience to “make up their own minds” on matters of the Constitution, rule of law, free markets, Marxism, and other matters of national, international, and human importance?
The final paragraph included a string of platitudes, and several disjointed and unrelated topics. Aren’t paragraphs to be used for one topic with an introduction of an argument, a middle section for defense, and a final conclusion?
Finally, I doubt that your liberal colleagues ( Marxists and their useful idiots) are scrupulous about excluding their views from their lectures and class discussions.
If someone is going to threaten my child to the point that they honestly believe that their life is in danger then they are guilty of child abuse.
######
Absolutely! An experience of terror that was totally manufactured, and will never be forgotten by those kids.
I did NOT impart my conservative views on my kids
&&&&&
but sadly, leftist teachers feel that it is their duty to pass on their leftist perspectives every day. Thus, children are exposed to one idealogy only in most schools.
So yeah, there are some good teachers out there. But for the most part, they are the "fools, the self-appointed political officers and the automatons with no judgment, common sense or sense of proportion" as you so aptly stated. All this was before the Department of Education was created under Jimmy Carter. I am sure school is worse today. I thank God I never had children and had to go through this crap. I would probably end up being one of those parents you read about who winds up getting arrested.
Here is another point of view. Lets deliberate on the issue rather than label as stupid or crazy.
Was the first fire drill called crazy because it might scare children when in fact there was no fire? Maybe.
We are involved in a war with Islamofascism that considers shooting school children fair game. We also have the occasional nutcase who wants to shoot at the unarmed and defenseless. What is so wrong with preparing for such scenarios by drill? Or do we allow Americans to experience terror for the first time only in a reality situation?
Why is the idea so stupid? What if the children learned something? Or has that also been outlawed in schools so they only learn some sanitized myths about the real world.
BTW, far from encouraging some liberal aversion to ownership of firearms, I would guess that most children who experienced even a practice scenario would realize the necessity of arming oneself. Experiencing the bad things in the world is often a cure for the head up the as world view that we often tag as a liberalism.
Sixth graders are old enough to learn that the shootings on TV are sometimes real. Prepare for it.
If some kids had staged a “fake gun attack” to “train” the teachers, they be up on felony charges.
There never were missile or air-deliverable 20MT bombs. For a 1 MT blast, at 10 miles you would only see 1 psi of overpressure -- enough to blow out windows, but not enough to collapse a well-constructed concrete structure like most public school buildings built during the 50's and 60's. See Tutorial on the Effects of Nuclear Weapons pdf, page 6
At my kids’ school, they are being taught the proper care use of a firearm, and to shoot back when attacked. There are firearms available in their school in case they are needed. That is one of the many advantages of homeschooling.
The fathers of those children need to, as a group, visit those teachers, drive them out to a secluded field where a shallow trench has been recently dug, and put a little scare into them - let the ‘teachers’ walk home terrified and in their underwear. I’d settle for that over a lawsuit.
The real lesson those kids will learn from this is that teachers lie to them.
Instead of teaching the kids to be cowering victims, why not teach them how to protect themselves with a #2 pencil?
These kids learned nothing during this drill.
All well and good sir, but that publication is dated 1979. Perhaps you could provide the publication that would have made this info availabe to the public in 1951, when I was 6 years old and going through these drills? Back then most folks only knew that the A Bomb, wich could wipe out a city, was nothing compared to the H Bomb!
I wonder what it was like during the planning session?
If this is what passes for “judgment” in public schools, it only makes me happier that my kids have never spent a day in a public school.
If this is what passes for “judgment” in public schools, it only makes me happier that my kids have never spent a day in a public school.
I completely agree. However, this sort of “drill” should, if desired, be conducted only after the kids have had a thorough briefing to explain what sort of drill the school is going to conduct, what, if anything the kids are expected to do, and why the school is conducting the drill.
Running a surprise drill that simulates a true life-or-death situation is an invitation to disaster.
This is just as stupid as scaring the kids with global warming crap and Algore’s movie!
I doubt the those teachers will be criticized.
Again.
There are 2 types of government teachers:
1) Bad teachers
2) Enablers.
The premise of government schools is a fundamentally flawed model, therefore they can **not** be reformed. Any parent or teacher continuing to participate in government schools are a large part of the problem.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.