The principal and teachers in a Goldsboro, NC middle school thought it would be a great idea to tell kids that there was an armed robber roaming the school and then have a staff member dressed up in a ski mask armed with a fake handgun break into the room.
The school claims that they were teaching situational awareness. However, I’m not sure how it is you’re teaching them to be anything other than frightened sitting ducks when the teacher indicates that they know there’s a threat lurking, but the class is just expected to sit there and let it happen. Follow that up with a fake gunman entering the room, and it’s just so hard to see why this went over about as well as a lead balloon. At least the district spokesman admits that the staff involved lacked judgement, and the staffer who pretended to be the gunman may face disciplinary action.
I saw this link from Free Range Kids, and she made a great point with these types of exercises:
Kids are NOT in constant danger, so can we please stop dreaming up ever more dramatic ways to “protect†them as if they were?
Of course, the sad part is that it could be argued that at least the North Carolina incident was based on a general threat in life, that while extremely unlikely, isn’t completely insane. Ventura County, California schools thought the families of their students needed to spend their time developing plans for how to deal with their children in school if the get nuked. Yup, this is where your money to the public school system goes these days, folks.
What disgusts me is that we home school our kids (see above story if you wonder why…) and I still have to pay taxes to fund this kind of absurdity. There oughta be a law. Er, wait, I take that back. If they tried to write a law, they’d find even more new ways to screw us.
true…..
If you get nuked picking up your kids will be the least of your worries for the final moments of your life…..
Too bad the kids didn’t mass rush and stab the fool with pencils and beat the crap outta him with desks and chairs.
I guess this is “cultural,” carried forward from another era, but having spent quite a bit of time under school desks drilling for potential nuclear attacks — that never came — the drills preparing for nuclear-armed terrorists do not seem all that outrageous to me. I was in high school during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which could have become “real,” and of course we came within minutes of a nuclear war in 1983, during the first Reagan Administration. A large part of our abandonment of civil liberties over the past twelve years has been based on the plausibility of a “dirty bomb” nuclear attack. If it’s worth giving up our civil liberties and expanding the power and reach of The State for, I guess it’s worth teaching kids to tape up the cracks in the window frames, or whatever they do.
Just for historical lore: One time a friend or two and I were fishing off that old hump-backed stone bridge (now long gone) over the creek at the upper end of Core Creek Park, on one of the days when a big national air raid drill was scheduled. (Yes, once upon a time the creek there was deep enough to support fish, including trout.) When the sirens went off we figured we didn’t want to be hassled by any erstwhile volunteer air raid wardens that might wander past, so we slid under the stone arches, where we couldn’t be seen, and kept on fishing. As I recall, we were supposed to find a ditch to lay down in, or something.
1. Teaching kids to sit there and wait their turn to get shot is stupid.
2. This kind of drill does nothing but scare the kids.
3. If they are going to do a drill, it should be announced, and kids should be trained to beat the shit out of the potential threat with anything at hand.
Try to shoot someone if you’re being bumrushed by the whole room. This BS let the authorities handle everything crap is what gets people killed.
“Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill ’em right back.” – Malcolm Reynolds
Wow. I can think of a few ways to teach situational awareness that are much better than this. Of course, this is kind of a case of “the blind leading our children”. The best folks to teach situational awareness to kids are probably hunters, or maybe infantry soldiers, or cops, with a background in elementary education.
These are probably more applicable for middle school kids:
http://momwithaprep.com/10-great-pretend-games-to-help-your-children-develop-preparedness-skills/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheMomWithAPrep+%28The+Mom+with+a+Prep%29/
Anyhow, another situation handled poorly in public school? It’s times like this that I am glad that I practice my “surprised face” in the mirror everyday….
–Matt R.
Sorry. Bad choice from that school.
If this happened at my kids school I would get a text from my child from the classroom (they give her an iPad), and then I’d be on the 911 with the Sheriffs while wifey and I are flying over.
Sheriffs/troopers are 12 miles away. I am 4 miles away. We are rural. Wife can clear a rack of steel in six seconds. I taught her.
Shit would end badly.
Patrick, I’ll bet $10 that school expels any kid caught with a cell phone.
Your bet is taken. :)
We chose her school (private) based on the lack of idiocy present. They – unlike public schools – maintain an “open campus” environment where parent are welcome to show up at any time, without notice. I can actually take my laptop and go work in one of their libraries during the day, just to be close. I don’t need permission to stop by and view the classroom environment. My kid is encouraged to contact me any time she has an issue. It’s a big place (over 200 acres) covering pre-K through 12th grade. They are a partial boarding school and host kids from China, India and Brazil. Talk about competition…
We are lucky to have them within range of our home. If not for this place, we would have home schooled.
But the “best” public elementary school in the state (in our district…again “lucky”) would not even give the wife and I a tour during the school year. And off session they would not even return our calls.
So maybe you win this round. On average, eduction systems suck. Next time you are in Maryland, email me and I’ll buy you a beer or two.
Ours is like that, but I figure screw them, my kid has a phone in case of emergency.
Their policy is to confiscate the phone though, not expel the kid. All my kids have had cell phones and have so far had no problems with the school.
I also carry in the school whenever I’m there, again, screw them.
If somebody starts shit while I’m there they will be happy I ignored their stupid rules.
Sounds like leftist academics acting out their hatred their hatred of private gun ownership by falsely threatening children to advance their anti-gun agenda. That’s a pretty malicious way to generate anti-gun propaganda.
Good thing it wasn’t my classroom. I tell my kids that if anyone comes in to hurt them, they should throw whatever is closest to hand at them while I beat them up with a blunt object (since that’s all I’m allowed).
Do you have a flag in your room? If so you could get a special pike-like tip for the flagstaff. Possibly conceal it inside something soft or breakaway. Then look up some bayonet drills.
Or quietly replace the wood pole with a nice piece of iron pipe. :-)
That school administrator should be brought up on charges of fomenting a riot or terrorism. The “robber” is lucky he wasn’t tackled, punched, slammed with a chair, or stabbed by a parent reacting to this FOOLISHNESS with action. What a bunch of a******s.