Parents at the Fox Hill Primary School in Sheffield England are a bit put out over a curious educational program at the school. When children showed up at the school recently, they were met by a bloody crime scene, a dead teacher on the ground, and police. They were asked to solve the crime but not told that it was all for fun.
Students were told that the teacher was killed in a violent break-in. Children as young as five were shocked to see the body and blood with police tape around the crime scene.
The school only sent an explanatory letter at the end of the week and the truth was kept from the parents to make the exercise more real.
I actually think the project was creative and well-meaning. I simply do not understand why it was so necessary to pretend that it was real. Kids would have enjoyed a faux murder mystery without the trauma. I particularly believe that parents should have been told and allowed to inform their children at their own discretion.
For the full story, click here.
Sounds like a good Murder Mystery to me, the only thing left out was the train.
From the MailOnline article:
The problem-solving week was held to cover key skills in the school curriculum from creative writing through to science, numeracy and analysis.
‘We wanted to give the pupils a topic that would inspire their creativity and their imaginations which is why the crime scene was chosen.
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I am ever suprised by stories written about at this blog–but this is one that truly “takes the cake.” To think that the school staff and the Yorkshire police department were involved in this “educational” stunt that lasted for four days is really perplexing. How could any of these adults have thought that this was a good idea?
Children should feel safe in the schools they attend. I can only imagine how frightened–and even traumatized–the young students must have been.
I think there are better ways to involve children in learning in creative ways that don’t have to do with a break-in at their school and the murder of one of their teachers.
I hope the school has a good guidance counselor–or school psychologist.
I’m with Elaine.
This is all just shockingly stupid on the “adults” behalf.
Well Buddha and Elaine.,
How many of these little people ratted on their friends? Proper training starts young.
Sig Heil, Sig Heil!
I find it interesting that school children would react in a manner that believed the scene to be real, while adults in a real and actual murder committed before their very eyes in their own church did not believe it to be true.
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2009/03/i-thought-it-was-play-skit-not-real.html
This story, added to the “meep” one indicates that many of today’s educators not only don’t have a clue how to perform the job, but are capable of inflicting serious harm on their charges. I went to public school and high school throughout the 50′s and early 60′s and I thought then that most educators were pompous, self important fools, who were sadly deficient in the knowledge they were chosen to impart. Looking at the stories we see today I wonder if things have actually devolved.
Why doesn’t it surprise me that Turley wouldn’t think this a bad idea.
God I pity kids raised by people like him. Perhaps we need to have parenting licenses….
amerstates,
Perhaps a close re-reading of the article might change your opinion as to its content.
Amerstates,
I pity a lot of things but never people. You like your GOP counter points are quick to point out defects but often short of valid solutions. In this matter what would you suggest?
Don’t feed the trolls, ignore them.
No one does murder mysteries as well as the Brits.
Bonnie,
They have only had more practice than we. Ask Vince Foster or Kenneth Lay oh you can’t one died from a gun shot, if LBJ was alive I would suggest that he was near. But since I am certain he did in fact die. The circumstances are still suspect. Ken Lay, me thinks it was an over dose of oxygen to the main aorta which will have the same symptoms as a heart attack unless you look for that pin prick in the neck.
Both were assassinated for political reasons. This I have reason to believe is true.
I would agree with what Mike Spindell said, but I’m afraid my local principal might sneak over at night and key my car.
It’s been some decades since I went to school but I remember those veiled threats from educators. If for example I questioned them, they’d confuse questioning authority with challenging authority. So I’d hear, “I’ll put something in your file that will prevent you from ever attending college.”
I don’t hear the ‘permanent record’ threat anymore, but I hear the IEP, special ed, and behavior medication threat. Whatever I think of educators, I’ve found it’s best to just feed their egos and agree with everything they say. And now we know, don’t say the M word if they might overhear it.