Sometimes I feel as if the world is out of kilter and that common sense seems to be one sense that is not actually that common! Imagine my surprise (shock or horror are better words) when this week I heard of the recent so called “role plays” in schools. Role plays, when I was at school involved a little bit of harmless make believe whereby we pretended to buy fruit (French class) or play acted a scripted. However in today’s society, “role plays” have reached a whole new level, if the ramifications weren’t so serious, one would curl up and howl with laughter. Surely these well educated folk can’t really believe these “Role play” ideas were in anyway acceptable let alone educationally beneficial?
First great role play idea; “pretend to have a teacher shot by gunman in the play ground”. Yes, can you actually believe it this cunning stunt was carried out by Blackminster Middle School in Evesham earlier this week? Pupils watched in horror as their Science Teacher, Richard Kent was gunned down in the playground; and then watched as staff pretended to try and resuscitate him. Strangely, some children were traumatised by these actions and posted comments on Facebook; “it was sick” another wrote; “most of us were so scared we were crying.” When questioned, Mr Hollands, Head Teacher stated that Mr Kent often plays “the dame” (These are not the words I would use Mr Holland!) and has admitted it was a step too far!
Second fantastic idea is to pretend Aliens have landed. Yes this is what the lucky children of New Milton had to endure. With the help of the local police, teachers dug a hole in a nearby field, buried a CD player (which played crash noises), left some so called spaceship remnants out and cornered the area off with incident tape. To add more realism to this “role play” the local police sped through the playground with sirens sounding!! According to one teacher: The children didn’t know what was going on! As they approached the crash site we could see how shocked and perplexed they were. It was a fantastic first reaction.” mm as a parent of a 5 year old, I wouldn’t have described that reaction as remotely fantastic (visions of many sleepless nights comforting a child suffering from nightmares springs to mind).
However, as with life the best is left till last, this must be the ultimate role play of what “not to do with children”. Yes believe it or not but teachers at St Hilary’s Primary School in East Kilbride told some pupils that they were going to be taken away from their parents because they had a lower IQ than their classmates. The whole “stunt” was devised so that children could empathize with the plight of Jewish children in 1930s Germany. Apparently, not surprisingly, some children were “very distressed” leading to South Lanarkshire Council having to issue a formal apology.
And to think in my day, our class teacher panicked because our Natural World TV programme suddenly showed topless Amazonian women! Why do we need such injection of authenticity in schools? Haven’t children enough to cope with learning to read, write and pass SATs? Next we’ll see an extra subject added to the curriculum – post traumatic stress treatment. And don’t get me started on the Head teacher that thought it was a good idea to slaughter the school pets!
