Gotcha!

Ever have one of those moments where you think to yourself in disbelief, "There's no way in hell someone could be that stupid. I mean there's just no fucking way. How could anyone ever in the history of the world think that's a good idea?" Well, when I heard about the following incident I thought the same. Good Lord is it an exhibition in poor decision-making. Apparently Scales Elementary School in Murfreesboro, Tennessee is gunning (no pun intended) for the title of "School Most Likely to Be Found Liable for Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress." Rather than not stage a fake gun attack on sixth graders during a class trip, Scales just went ahead and did it. "During the last night of the trip, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose. They were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on locked door." Kids were crying, thinking that they were going to die.

The assistant principal explained that it was supposed to be a "learning experience." What they were to learn from this remains to be seen. I'm not sure I could think of a worse possible learning experience for a group of 12-year-olds than to threaten them with their lives just weeks after the worst mass murder in US history. I suppose the fake attack could be deemed a raging success if the goal was for students to learn any of the following: (1) how to sob uncontrollably; (2) your teachers really are here just to torment you and make your life miserable; (3) every day you should fear being murdered by a gunman -- every fucking day -- so be prepared; (4) never take class trips; (5) the teachers and administrators at Scales Elementary School should never have been certified as teachers or allowed to graduate from college; (6) never trust adults -- ever; (7) the steps necessary to develop an irrational fear of state parks; or (8) how to become dependent on anti-depressants before you're a teenager.

Here are some other "learning experiences" Scales plans to implement:

• One by one, the kindergarteners are brought to the principal's office, where they are told that their parents were violently dismembered and eaten by The Boogie Man, who will be waiting outside the school to "finish the job." The stated purpose is to teach the kids about sharing.
• In order to teach the third graders about stranger danger, their teacher is "pretend raped" and "pretend stabbed 67 times in the chest" by a "pretend transient named Gary" in the middle of an otherwise boring lesson about how to write in cursive.
• Every kid in school is forcibly injected with what they are told is the AIDS virus. This way they will appreciate the importance of safe sex, at least until they are told on their respective 18th birthdays that they were injected merely with saline. Gotcha!
• To teach the entire school an important lesson about the value of proper dreaming, the principal hires Freddy Krueger as the school janitor.