8 Comments

These exercises need to be as realistic as possible to be effective. They needed to send in some real gunmen to shoot the principal.

Bob

On the one hand, it’s an incredibly scary situation, and you want to make the training as realistic as possible so that if it does happen you don’t get people having their brain overwhelmed by unaccustomed surges of adrenalin.

On the other hand, we do not improve the verisimilitude of fire drills by actually setting the school on fire.

Walter Olson asks:

Have authorities lost their mind?

Either that, or they have made a rational decision to practice gratuitous evil by presenting their their young charges with an impossible catch-22.

As Brian Doherty cited, from the anorak.co.uk article:

It’s unclear exactly what good-citizenship lesson the kids were supposed to learn — “sphincter control,” perhaps — but it’s a lucky thing none of the kids tried anything heroic, like disarming the gunman, because any student who did that would surely be kicked out of school.

Again, seriously. Last March, that’s exactly what happened to a Florida high school boy after he disarmed a fellow student who was aiming a loaded weapon at a third classmate. School spokesmen justified the hero kid’s suspension because, “If there is a potentially dangerous situation, Florida law allows the principal to suspend a student immediately pending a hearing.”

Shouldn’t the principal be fired for violating the school’s zero tolerance rule?

terrorizing kids is just a stupid idea. what is these people’s thinking at?

Aren’t there anti-bullying laws to address abusive situations like this?

“Have authorities lost their mind?”

This presupposes without evidence that the authorities had a mind in the first place.

Was this exercise held before or after the school had armed the teachers?