[Blase]

The kids are just pussies.

[Pyro]

lets just say if i was one of the students...id of been pissed

and if i was a parent...id wish them death.

[Douchetallica]

Originally Posted by Pyro

and if i was a parent...id wish them death.

The kids? freak:

[TGB!]

How is this ANY different than a fire drill? The masks may have been over the top, but would the "kids" have believed them otherwise?

[Nyck]

[quote="TGB!":f5925]How is this ANY different than a fire drill? The masks may have been over the top, but would the "kids" have believed them otherwise?[/quote:f5925]

Fire drills are usually conducted during school hours AT the school, not a week long class trip.

Fire drills are usually scheduled mandatory events for the school, and in most cases are announced beforehand.

Fire drills are designed so that you know evacuation routes and what to do during them.
you don't have people on fire with teachers running into classes saying OH MY GOD FIRE!!! FIRE!!!!! THIS ISN'T A DRILL.

if you want to have drills on what should occur is there is a gunman at a school thats fine. conduct them give them proper instruction on what to do and then discuss it. you don't need to believe there is a fire to conduct a drill.

these teachers didn't DRILL them. a drill is instruction on how to do something not an episode of SCARE TATICS where you say "lets shock them and see what they do." it was an event where a group of teachers decided to do something outside of school events and practices and go about it in the completely wrong method and they should be punished accordingly for their stupid decision.

[tomxtr]

[quote="TGB!":00526]How is this ANY different than a fire drill? The masks may have been over the top, but would the "kids" have believed them otherwise?[/quote:00526]

Fire drills rarely have the potential to make one soil themselves.

[Chronic Diarrhea]

Running a drill for the potential that a mad gunman will attack a group of students on a field trip doesn't prepare the children in any way. The only way you can do something about that is if one of the teachers is armed with a weapon and can counter the shooter. It would be like having a drill at a high-profile business in the case of a terrorist attack. What exactly can you do if that happens? The answer is, sadly, not much at all. That's why it's important to take PRECAUTIONARY actions to prevent something like that happening, instead of focusing on what to do during the event.

The biggest thing a teacher can do to prevent the possible loss of life in the event of a school shooter is very simple: lock the classroom door. A lot of my teachers would lock the door for every class as soon as the tardy bell rung. The deaths of the VT students could have possibly been reduced greatly if that classroom door was locked. As it stands today, anybody could walk into a high school or college campus and duplicate a school shooting wherever teachers don't lock the doors.

Point is, you can learn something from a fire drill because the actual procedure of leaving the building is essential to survival. You can learn something from a tornado drill in the same fashion. What exactly can you do if somebody with an an automatic rifle or shotgun kicks the door open to your classroom and immediately opens fire? Are there any reasonable methods that consistently prove it will increase your chance of survival? Not likely. You're pretty much SOL if that happens. That's why it's more important to focus on what to do before it happens, rather than during.

[TGB!]

[quote:7e8d8]Fire drills are usually conducted during school hours AT the school, not a week long class trip. [/quote:7e8d8]

The children are still under the protection of the school. Because you move the locale doesn't all of a sudden remove the schools oversight/responsibility and their ability to conduct SCHOOL activities. Unless it was a trip where 69 students and a handful of teachers just happened to meet up at the same place, it was a school function.

[quote:7e8d8]Fire drills are usually scheduled mandatory events for the school, and in most cases are announced beforehand. [/quote:7e8d8]

Usually - but not in a majority of cases at least where I went to school. That defeats the purpose of preparedness. You can (pointlessly) argue the semantics of a "fire drill" and a staged demonstration till the cows come home, the situations remain the same: the teachers conducted this EXERCISE as a means of gauging students real world preparedness to a gunman situation. This is relevant BECAUSE of the bullshit that happened at VT. Getting permission from parents to conduct this defeats the purpose of being able to see just how well your students (the students whose lives are in these teachers hands the majority of their young lives) can react under extreme stress situations.

The parents are flipping out (well one is from the story) because its what parents do - forever convinced that they know the best way to EDUCATE their kids.

[quote:7e8d8]What exactly can you do if somebody with an an automatic rifle or shotgun kicks the door open to your classroom and immediately opens fire?[/quote:7e8d8]

Fucking nonsense. Are you saying there is no merit in determining your classes response to an armed gunman? Are you saying the best plan for someone having gun at school is to run for what you think is the safe door and start trampling over classmates - since thats exactly what it seems everyone does in this situation, and you get more injuries that aren't inflicted by the actual gunman.

[Zoner]

Uhhh, no matter how you slice it, this will be psychologically scarring for most kids that age. Period.

[Chronic Diarrhea]

You're missing the point TGB. You can't train children to react in a particular way in high-stress situations. You fail to analyze where children have developed cognitively. You can tell them how to react, you can even pull off this BS stunt and stage a real attack, but it's not going to ensure that there's any set formula for how to minimize death in the instance of a gunman. There IS a set formula for events such as fires, tornadoes, earthquakes, and such. That's why schools run those drills, because it's a formula that dictates the course of action. There's absolutely no way you can predict what may or may not happen if a gunman enters a school, or hijacks a class field trip.

So what if they staged a real attack? It wasn't a real attack. The "gunmen" aren't going to harm the children, even if the children believe that they will. What happens if you take an actual madman who doesn't give a shit about the value of human life and just lays waste to those children, even if they reacted in the exact same way that they did during the drill? It accomplishes nothing.