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  • Cruel or clever?

    Source

    Calif. school defends DWI shock tactics
    Students were told classmates had died in car wrecks — they hadn't

    OCEANSIDE, Calif. - On a Monday morning last month, highway patrol officers visited 20 classrooms at El Camino High School to announce some horrible news: Several students had been killed in car wrecks over the weekend.

    Classmates wept. Some became hysterical.

    A few hours and many tears later, though, the pain turned to fury when the teenagers learned that it was all a hoax — a scared-straight exercise designed by school officials to dramatize the consequences of drinking and driving.
    Based on the car fatalities we've had here involving young teenagers, I can't help but think that the school officials and police officers were right in using this scare tactic. I know too many kids who have no regard whatsoever for their life or the lives of others that they need to be scared like this.

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  • #2
    Re: Cruel...or clever?

    I say clever. I work with kids in drug prevention, and 90% of them think it's a joke that schools and other agencies are concerned about underaged drinking. The 10% who take it seriously do so because they learned the hard way. I hope these kids will take this "fake" experience and learn it the hard way.
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    • #3
      Re: Cruel...or clever?

      And some say spanking is cruel?
      FutureNewsNetwork.com
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      • #4
        Re: Cruel...or clever?

        Based only on what was posted in the first message, I have to say it seems outrageous to me. I would want to know how they arrived at the decision that this would be a good idea, other than that they simply thought it would be a good idea. Is there research that supported this practice? Did they consult with a significant number of mental health professionals who specialize in trauma and grief? Did they get permission from each of the student's parents before subjecting their children to this stunt?

        I have extremely serious doubts that any University Level Institutional Review Board would sign off on an excercise like this as part of a research project. And, I am fairly certain that none would give the go-ahead without parental consent.

        People can be psychologically harmed by something like this. Is there some evidence that this will have the desired effect? Or, is this an experiment and they plan to follow the lives of these kids for the next ten years to see if it was effective? If they don't plan to follow-up, then what are they doing? Are they randomly monkeying with the emotions of adolescents?

        You can be fairly certain of one consequence. Some of these kids will experience significantly diminished levels of trust for authorities. Rightly so, I would say.

        I would think the school administrators have some questions to answer.

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        • #5
          Re: Cruel or clever?

          There are a lot of ways to teach young people. Perhaps the message isn't getting through the way it's been preached, but is the goal to get the message through at any price?

          I frequently have to discipline students for joking around about certain topics. There are things in this life that are too serious for joking around about. I've been especially disturbed by some boys' recent use of the word "rape" to mean "beat in a sporting competition," as in "The Patriots got raped by the Giants in the SuperBowl." I will not tolerate it, because even if everybody in the room knows exactly the intended meaning, the use of this word in this way diminishes the seriousness of the word in its usual context, and I will not have that in my classroom. My students don't necessarily agree, but they respect my opinion and either refrain while in my room or, when they forget, accept the consequences without argument.

          How could I expect this kind of cooperation from them once I pulled a stunt like this? If, heaven forbid, the day came when I had to make the announcement that someone HAD died, I would first have to preface my statement with, "This is not a joke," and even then I wouldn't convince everyone right away that I was being serious.

          We live in a results-driven culture, we educators, but that culture was imposed upon us by politicians and bureaucrats. The truth, and we all know it, is that the expectation of results is a red herring that distracts in the classroom from what the real culture is: the development of young men and women into responsible, thinking human beings. That doesn't test very nicely, though, so we focus on crap like whether or not students can give the equation of the line passing through (1, 2) and (-1, 0) when almost every one of the taxpayers demanding "accountability" for schools cannot themselves solve the same problem.

          Yet the administrators who put this plan into action put that aside for one day and put into motion this plan for character development. Did they as the teachers for their opinions, because I can't imagine a responsible teacher agreeing to look his or her students in the eyes and lie to them about their best friends being killed.

          Jim75 is right: I doubt the IRB of any institution would approve of this kind of experiment, which means it probably crosses the line into cruelty.

          If I were a teacher on this faculty and my school went ahead with this stupid plan, I would have been absent from school that day, but my letter of resignation would have been on the principal's desk.
          Last edited by scrivener; June 13, 2008, 04:45 PM.
          But I'm disturbed! I'm depressed! I'm inadequate! I GOT IT ALL! (George Costanza)
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          • #6
            Re: Cruel or clever?

            on the fence with this one?! what's up with kids nowadays?! i'm not getting it?
            "chaos reigns within.
            reflect, repent and reboot.
            order shall return."

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            • #7
              Re: Cruel or clever?

              Which part is confusing to you, Kani-Lehua? It sounds like you don't understand why the teens would be upset that their teachers first told them that their classmates had been killed in a car accident and then told them that it was a hoax.

              I think we would all feel upset about being lied to about something so serious, don't you? The kind of emotions a thing like that puts you through cannot be erased with "we were only teaching you a lesson." This wasn't just an announcement like, "there was an accident and some people died." It actually named the students who supposedly died, and those students were not in school that day, as part of the "lesson."

              I think it totally makes sense that they would be indignant and outraged.
              But I'm disturbed! I'm depressed! I'm inadequate! I GOT IT ALL! (George Costanza)
              GrouchyTeacher.com

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              • #8
                Re: Cruel or clever?

                Did Ashton Kutcher come from behind the curtain and say, "You've been Punked?"

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                • #9
                  Re: Cruel or clever?

                  Originally posted by scrivener View Post
                  Which part is confusing to you, Kani-Lehua
                  i do understand that the hoax would/could have negative affects on those that experienced it.

                  to clarify: i don't understand the reason kids do the things they do? like the drinking, drugs, graffiti, property crime, violence, etc. what's going on? i probably don't understand because i'm not a parent? all it took was one look from my mother or father to be "scared straight".
                  "chaos reigns within.
                  reflect, repent and reboot.
                  order shall return."

                  microsoft error message with haiku poetry

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                  • #10
                    Re: Cruel or clever?

                    My first thought was what if any of the students had already been traumatized by previous incidents in their lives; be it domestic violence, death of a family member or friend, car accident...you name it. The tactic used in the high school could push some already emotionally fragile teens over the edge. Scary.

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                    • #11
                      Re: Cruel...or clever?

                      Originally posted by Jim75 View Post
                      People can be psychologically harmed by something like this. Is there some evidence that this will have the desired effect? Or, is this an experiment and they plan to follow the lives of these kids for the next ten years to see if it was effective? If they don't plan to follow-up, then what are they doing? Are they randomly monkeying with the emotions of adolescents?
                      Speaking for myself, if my children were high school-aged, I would take the "chance" of some emotional trauma (ooh, so risky ) from this experiment if it would lessen the possibility of their getting involved in an actual accident, wherein the emotional trauma and physical harm would be infinitely greater and very REAL.

                      But that's just me. My lil' ole' opinion. (So don't everybody who disagrees with me start flaming, calling me insensitive, ignorant, etc.)

                      Speaking of experiments, if you think that what this California school did was too radical or psychologically "scarring," you should do some research on past experiments. There's Jane Elliott, a 3rd grade teacher who conducted a blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise, wherein she favored her blue-eyed students and discriminated against the brown-eyed kids for a day. And the following day, the teacher reversed the treatment. This was designed to teach the children about how it feels to be both the beneficiary and victim of prejudice and discrimination. What were the long-term results? Google it, if you're really interested. The information might surprise some people here.

                      Another famous experiment was conducted by Ron Jones, who created an organization/movement called The Wave to teach his high school students the pitfalls and dangers of neo-facist thinking. A best-selling book has been written on this, as well as a dramatization on TV.
                      Last edited by Frankie's Market; June 13, 2008, 07:58 PM.
                      This post may contain an opinion that may conflict with your opinion. Do not take it personal. Polite discussion of difference of opinion is welcome.

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                      • #12
                        Re: Cruel...or clever?

                        Originally posted by Frankie's Market View Post
                        Speaking for myself, if my children were high school-aged, I would take the "chance" of some emotional trauma (ooh, so risky ) from this experiment if it would lessen the possibility of their getting involved in an actual accident, wherein the emotional trauma and physical harm would be infinitely greater and very REAL.
                        I respect this position, but you aren't a teacher (as far as I know). What you think is fine for your kids (or even for all kids) is not necessarily right for a school, which has to play by different rules. In your house, if you observe (as I do) the five-second rule and eat food you've dropped upon the floor, that's totally fine for you and your family. However, I'd like to think that you'd expect a restaurant to be a bit more stringent in its dropped-food policy.

                        Similarly, what you might consider good parenting (and I won't dispute it; I'm not a parent) can be bad educating. A school, just like that restaurant, has to stick to standards that are different from what you might consider fine for your children.

                        I'm familiar with both examples you cite, particularly with The Wave, which was novelized for young adults by Todd Strasser. An important thing to keep in mind about those is that they both happened a long time ago, in less litigious times. I went to school in the eighties and was paddled by my PE teacher. Even with parental permission right now, though, a school would have to be crazy to allow corporal punishment. There are all kinds of things schools used to do that, for better or worse, they can no longer do.

                        One last point in response: Teachers cannot get away, in students' eyes, with the stuff parents and coaches get away with. If an athlete comes to practice late and the coach makes him run laps until he's throwing up, parents and teammates applaud and the athlete considers it just. If I do the same thing (or some academic equivalent) to a student, my career is over. I'm not even talking about the law here; I'm talking about establishing a classroom environment in which students will learn. If I treat my students the way these teachers treated theirs, I don't think I can count on their trust anymore, and that trust is a critical part of what I do. My classroom is not the military, where I bark orders and students perform. My classroom is founded on the idea that I'm there to help students become the young men and women they want to become, and if I pull stuff like this, I don't think I can do my job anymore.

                        Edit:
                        Oops. I lied. I'm also going to add this (in support of my what's-okay-for-your-kids-may-not-be-okay-for-the-school point). Tutusue brings up a good point. I was thinking about my own school, and what it would mean to pull this kind of stunt on my students. I have students who lost step-siblings in the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001. I have students who lost parents in horrible accidents (car, plane, and even parachute) and others who lost parents to disease. I have students who lost friends to suicide. I don't know if something like this would push any of them "over the edge," because there is no way to know that. But I don't see how I could know this about my students and STILL decide to pull a prank like this, even for the purpose of driving home an important point about drunken driving. It's just irresponsible and insensitive.
                        Last edited by scrivener; June 13, 2008, 08:31 PM.
                        But I'm disturbed! I'm depressed! I'm inadequate! I GOT IT ALL! (George Costanza)
                        GrouchyTeacher.com

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                        • #13
                          Re: Cruel or clever?

                          Wasn't there a school that staged a shooting scenario (a la Columbine and Virginia Tech) as part of it's emergency training (without telling the students that it wasn't real)?

                          I'm not so sure how effective this kind of "scared straight" tactic is. Back in the day, schools used to take students on field trips to see blackened lungs of deceased smokers (actual slices of lungs) and the worst case scenarios for smokers in an effort to scare them away from smoking. and during the actual field trip, a lot of us kids would swear to never smoke. Cos, ewwww! But in a few short years, a fair number of those students would be smoking.

                          I'm pretty sure most people don't get into their cars intending to get into a drunken accident. I'd bet a fair number of drunken driving accidents happen because the drivers don't realize they're drunk or don't think they're impaired or as impaired as they might be. So, yeah, is there anything backing up that this scared straight tactic is actually effective to prevent drunken driving?

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                          • #14
                            Re: Cruel or clever?

                            I think that this hoax was unfortunate, cruel, and unnecessary!
                            ~ This is the strangest life I've ever known ~

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                            • #15
                              Re: Cruel or clever?

                              Last year in one of my art classes we were given a project to disrupt people in some way, and one group of students chose to stage the death and memorial of a classmate. Not being part of that group, I walked into school one morning to be faced with a large banner announcing a memorial service to be held that day. I wasn't close with the guy, but we'd been in class for four years, and it was definitely upsetting. Then someone informed me that it was part of a project, that it wasn't real.

                              Do things like that actually serve to "shock people straight"? I've known people to watch their family dying of lung cancer but still smoke a pack every day. Our childhood is scarred from our mother's alcoholism and yet my brother is a heavy drinker. And there exists, not just in teenagers, the mentality that such things only happen to other people, never to them. As Adri said, people don't plan to get into drunken accidents.
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