Education
A Little More than “Poor Judgment”
by Clay Staggs
This is outrageous. Absolutely outrageous. While on a field trip to a state park, the assistant principal, teachers, and other staff members from the Scales Elementary School in Murfreesboro, TN, decided to have a little drill with their 6th graders (11 and 12 year olds). They staged a fictitious attack by an assailant with a gun, yet told the terrified children that it was not a drill. The kids, who were hiding under tables sobbing, later were told that this was a “learning experience.”
According to the AP account:
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 a locked door.
Now, I suppose that there’s nothing wrong with having drills for emergencies. After all, we had tornado and fire drills regularly when I was in school. But to tell the children that it wasn’t a drill? And the teachers were the ones who apparently cooked up this idea and executed it? What is going on here?
One might be tempted to think that it would go without saying that the adults involved would be immediately dismissed or at least disciplined in some fashion. But not so fast:
Principal Catherine Stephens declined to say whether the staff members involved would face disciplinary action, but said the situation “involved poor judgment.”
That’s the understatement of the year.
Maybe I’m just having an emotional reaction to this, but if this were my kid, I’d be apoplectic. What’s to be gained by this? I suppose that (sadly) it may not be a bad idea to have an emergency plan in the event of an intruder, but to stage such a thing off campus and to lie to the children that it’s real? Isn’t this just like the little boy who cried wolf? Who will believe the teachers the next time if there’s a real threat from a gunman? I mean, don’t we learn these types of lessons as kids? Where is the thinking and discernment on the part of the adults in charge?
Yeesh.
Posted by Clay Staggs at May 14, 2007 01:50 PM
I saw this too and I was stupified. I’m not one to quickly jump and put my kid in the victim pool, but this is totally insane, and I too, would be livid if Gracen had been involved.
Discernment is a rare commodity anymore, unfortunately.
Jeff,
It’s the principal’s comment that just wipes me out. Faced with this obviously ridiculous situation, she can’t even bring herself to say that the adult perpetrators of this idiocy will surely face some sanction? Come on! What does it take for a teacher to get in trouble? If those same teachers had said politically incorrect things about Islam, or questioned the absolutely inviolable truth of human-induced global warming, how quickly would their heads have been on the chopping block?
It’s just so completely upside down.
Teaching effectively is about so much more than subject matter. It should involve a love for one’s students, and treating them with the same level of respect you want to receive from them. At the front of any teacher/student relationship should be the development of trust. One can hardly expect these qualities to emerge, however, in an environment where the very basis of trust and truth is denied or, at best, ignored. Action is ALWAYS driven by underlying belief or lack of it.
What we have here is an example of why schools have zero tolerance policies. The people in charge have, as a rule, such poor judgment that stuff like this is guaranteed to happen. On the other hand when there is no judgment allowed to be used then kids get expelled for waterguns. Boortz refers to the public school system as organized child neglect. He may be right.
Herb,
I agree. I got this link from Instapundit. Prof. Reynolds wondered what would have happened if an armed passer-by had taken the initiative to defend the children from the “assault.” Guess who would have been the villain then? It would surely have resulted in more calls for gun control, and not the dismissal of the idiots who set up such a scenario.
The problem with the public schools is, in my view, an economic one. Private compaines have to deal with employees who exibit such behavior, because it gives their competitors with competent employees an advantage. Because the public schools are a monopoly, this kind of thing can go without any real consequence. What can the parents of these kids do - demand their tax dollars back?
Wow. Sounds more like an elaborte, cruel prank than an actual drill. I will agree that this was in very bad taste, but look at it from the teacher’s perspective:
You have 6th graders in a public school who are growing into a rebellious stage and will treat almost anything you say as a joke. What would the kids have done in that situation if they knew it was fake? If they are the average 6th graders that I know, they would have laughed and been apathetic about the whole situation. In other words, there would be no point.
Now I’m not saying this was right, I just don’t think we can be so quick to say they should be punished harshly for this. But, thats just my opinion.
Tyler
Tyler,
Two thoughts about your post. With regard to your view of the typical 6th grader attitude (which I cannot dispute), it hardly seems like a tactic that will gain the teachers credibility to punk their students. Perhaps they wouldn’t have treated a known drill the same as what they went through, but fire drills are generally known to be drills and no one disputes their usefullness.
Secondly, if what the teachers were after was something that would truly prepare the students for such an event, what point is there to having the drill at a state park that the students may never see again? It would have been much more useful to do such a “preparedness exercise” on school property, I would think.
I don’t mean to suggest that the offenders should be drawn and quartered or anything, but IMHO this behavior proves a substantial lack of wisdom and discernment. Those are qualities that I would want my 6th graders teachers to exhibit.
Personally, I think they should give at least a few teachers guns, that way when the mad shooter comes looking for people to kill they won’t be sitting ducks. It might even help with classroom discipline :)
That is not a bad idea at all. Frankly, it seems quite illogical to me to say that schoolteachers should be less entitled to self-defense than your ordinary joe on the street. Prof. Reynolds frequently advocates such reasoning on his Instapundit blog, and I find it quite compelling.