[...] deliberately traumatizing little kids is considered appropriate education? WTF is wrong with people?School Stages Attempted Murder on Teacher as Lesson | Strollerderby __________________ Ooga [...]

My daughter took a “mystery solving” class in an after school program and they did something similar, but they staged an escape/robbery of a bird from a cage in a make believe living room in one of the classrooms. The kids were totally into it and never felt unsafe. Seems to me like these teachers went overboard.

This might fly in a high school or even a middle school, but primary seems a bit young to me. That’s just too much to spring on most small children. When I was in kindergarten, they staged a ‘bear break in’, and set out clues like a torn backpack, a few paw prints painted on the floor and tables, little pieces of hair, etc. Fun, educational, and not scary!

That is completely insane. I’d be very upset if my kids were subjected to this!

Ah, yes. In kindergarten, we did a search for a gingerbread man with funny little clues and what not. Fun, good amount of mystery. This is waaay too much for elementary schoolers. In higher grades, this could almost be fun.

I know many adults who would be traumatized by this scenario, nevermind children. My initial response to this is disgust, not only do the children have the violation of their ‘safe place’ but they have learned the lesson of deception. In the event they are confronted with an actual emergency, they now have cynicism and doubt that the emergency is authentic. It is a sad state of the education system that this is acceptable, what was the lesson that they wished these students to learn?

@fionna — you say that these children have “learned the lesson of deception,” but is that not a valuable thing to learn? maybe now when they discover that santa claus is really just mom and dad spoiling them, they won’t be so traumatized. yes, i agree that this school went overboard, violence is not something to be taken lightly, but i don’t think that kids learning skepticism and cynicism is necessarily a negative as you seem to imply. we need to be urging our children to ask questions, not sheltering them from the (sad to say it, but its true) violent, gritty, and disillusioned reality in which our society exists.