Alex

"Monday morning last month, highway patrol officers visited 20 classrooms at El Camino High School to announce some horrible news: Students had been killed in car wrecks over the weekend.

Classmates wept. Some became hysterical.

A few hours and many tears later, though, the pain turned to fury when the teenagers learned that it was all a hoax — a scared-straight exercise designed by school officials to dramatize the consequences of drinking and driving."

"'They were traumatized, but we wanted them to be traumatized,' said guidance counselor Lori Tauber. 'That's how they get the message.'"


Playing with students emotions by using death is going too far. The same lesson could have been taught using less abrasive means. Shame on them.

Is it an appropriate or cruel hoax?

Teachers defend shock tactics in teen drunk driving program / QCTimes.com

WI Crippler

Cruel, eh sure. But completely and utterly awesome as well.

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mikhail

Well it always ok to do this to children i dont think the could do this to adults they would probably get sued for emotional distress.

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Korimyr the Rat

If these had been real incidents, the job of the guidance counselors would be to help students deal with the trauma. There is no excuse for deliberately causing this kind of emotional distress.

Working as a Highway Patrol Officer's pretty dangerous, too. Wonder how they'd feel if someone had called their wives with notice that they'd been killed in the line of duty-- would they "get the message"?

Given that in the light of day, they are still defending their decision to engage in this conduct, I believe it's a message they need to be sent.

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jfuh

This is just sick and twisted to the point of cruel and unusual.
Death is not something that you would use - in fact counter to this it sounds more like crying wolf. There is a very important reason why death is so sensitive a topic - once you abuse that sensitivity counter to "getting the message across" what you instead get is numbing to it - the exact opposite.

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rathi

This causes unwarranted emotional damage to kids for little benefit. Making someone think that someone they cared about is terrible. Furthermore, it breaks trust between students and teacher/authority figures. This is not a method that should be used to combat drunk driving.

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1069

Were the allegedly dead classmates in on it?
I mean, were they instructed to stay home that day, or what?

This is bizarre.
As a mother, I would not want my kids announced to be dead, even if it was part of a... a lesson or whatever.
I'm superstitious enough to believe that pretending to be dead is really bad karma. It invites disaster; it draws death's attention.

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Vader

Since the link is non-functional ... I really couldn't tell you.

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Vader

I would say an investigation is warranted!

Simon W. Moon

I smell a tort.

I mean a toot

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