Cruel or clever?
 

School officials told students that friends had died, turns out to be a hoax.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25123570/

I'd be pissed. That is no way to teach anything.

That's one of the most messed up things I've ever heard of, and the school officials who planned it need to be fired. Not to mention - did they ask the student whose name they used if it was OK to tell the whole school he was dead?

I bet it worked.

I'm as much against drunk driving as anyone; as I've posted many times on this board, my wife and I were hit head on by a drunk driver last year.

This, however, is too much. There are lots of "scared straight" speakers out there who could instill a similar amount of fear and caution, without going that far.

When I was in high school we did something kind of like this--we asked several students from different school groups to be "dead" for the day.

Names were read over the PA system once an hour to demonstrate the number of losses to drunk driving each day. When their name was called student participants left class and went to get a sign to wear explaining they were killed by drunk driving and put on makeup to make them look pale. Then they were not able to talk to anyone for the rest of the day until they were "revived" at an assembly.

Something like this might be effective in place of totally traumatizing the students.

We did something as a yearly exercise for SADD. The "dead" students would be dressed all in black with a sign. They would be silent for the entire day. Students took exams and went to class, but teachers knew not to ask them any questions. We also put a wreck on the front lawn of the school saying Don't Drink and Drive. One year they were able to get the car that 4 students had been in when they were in a DDA. 2 people were killed and one paralyzed.

I don't know how I feel about this exercise the officials did. I wonder if the school is having real problems with underage drinking and they felt they had to do something dramatic.

the quote that got me:

"Yes, they were traumatized, but we wanted them to be traumatized."

I just don't think ANYTHING justifies this - especially after the whole MySpace hoax thing with an adult doing it.

What's next - to cut down on premarital sex, they pose as Planned Parenthood employees and tell everyone they're pregnant and have AIDS?

Where's adpiucf? I know that we've talked about this on GC before. The schools need to be using the slideshow that the scared straight speakers used in Broward County, FL back in the late 90s. I don't know of a single friend of mine who I went to high school school with who would ever drive drunk or without a seatbelt after seeing that slideshow. Horrific...that's the only word I can use to describe it.

I'm surprised that the police officers who broke the news actually agreed to participate in this. When the school officials talked to the police about their plans, why in the world did the police agree to participate? It seems like someone really didn't think this through.

I'd also like to know how the "dead" students opted in.

I like LPIdelta's idea better.

That sounds like the video we saw in driver's ed about wearing seatbelts. Either way, there are a lot of creative ways out there to get the point across without doing something like this.

Can't it be both?

How totally messed up. If my kids' school did something like this you better believe they would hear from me. The things that LPiDelta and Raggedy Ann mention make sense. This is just cruel.

And now, if a student really does die at one of these schools, nobody is going to believe the news at first!

It is just ignorant.

Someone should call the school officials and tell them that one of their kids was killed in a car accident.