My kindergartner freaks out when she sees a speck of blood, so I can only image her reaction to seeing bloody concrete, police tape and a chalk outline of a body on her way into school.
Fortunately, she doesn’t attend class at Foxhill Primary in the UK. That’s where irate parents are chastising school officials for setting up a mock crime scene involving fake blood and a female teacher with plaster on her head.
Apparently, school officials thought it would be a good idea to stage a violent break-in as part of a problem-solving exercise. Never mind that children as young as five were forced to witness the distressing bloody scene as they arrived for a full day of classes.
And forget about the fact that school administrators never gave parents a heads-up about their plan, and that the police were in on the plot, but not pupils. In fact, part of the pretend crime involved detectives asking students to help catch the culprit by looking at evidence.
Oh yeah, that’s a brilliant idea: Scandalize innocent children even more, then wait a week before informing their parents that the entire crime was a crock.
According to reports, more than 300 students at the Sheffield school remained in the dark about the mock crime scene until receiving an explanatory letter several days later. School officials reasoned that parents weren’t let in on the secret because they wanted to make the exercise as realistic as possible. However, that explanation didn’t sit well with parents whose kids were frightened by the event.
Several parents called the school’s decision “disgusting” and “totally irresponsible.” Others told local news reporters that kids had nothing to learn from the drill. While some added that school officials should have consulted parents first and given them a chance to object, or at the very least, provided them with the option of keeping their kids home from school if they didn’t want to expose their children to the fake attack.
I wholeheartedly agree.
From reading the reports, the school pretended a crime had really taken place for four days. In that time students believed one of their teachers had been injured and that their school had been broken into. Adding to the kids’ confusion is the fact that local police fingerprinted some of the students as part of the mock investigation.
Maybe I am overreacting, but does any parent out there think that scaring young children in order to promote problem-solving skills, is a good thing?
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