Students plan terror attack.

[Sever]

http://bigpondnews.com/articles/TopS...ck_504237.html

Students at a West Australian high school have been asked to plan a terrorist attack that would kill as many innocent people as possible as part of an assignment. The society and environment teacher at the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Community High School asked Year 10 students to pretend they were a terrorist planning a chemical or biological attack on 'an unsuspecting Australian community', The West Australian newspaper has reported. 'Your goal is to kill the MOST innocent civilians in order to get your message across,' the assignment said. The students had to explain their choice of victims and decide the best time and place for their attack. Fifteen-year-old student Sarah Gilbert said she was horrified to get the assignment because if that sort of thing was found in your house you'd be arrested. 'But there is a difference between being a terrorist and learning about terrorism - it's two completely different things,' she told The West Australian. Sarah's mother Tania told the newspaper the assignment was doubly offensive because a member of her extended family had been killed in the 2002 Bali bombings. Principal Terry Martino agreed the assignment was inappropriate, saying he had the task withdrawn as soon as he was aware of its content. 'The teacher, who is relatively inexperienced, made a well-intentioned but misguided attempt to engage the students in an assignment on contemporary conflict and how beliefs and values influence the behaviours and motives of individuals,' Mr Martino told the paper. 'Students were reminded that in no way was the teacher promoting terrorism and that if they chose not to complete the assignment they would not be disadvantaged.'

[Timber Loftis]

I think it's a cool assignment. Working for utility companies, I know I've thought to myself before about where the obvious and open and notorious and unguarded danger spots in the system are.

[Cerek]

Originally Posted by Timber Loftis I think it's a cool assignment. Working for utility companies, I know I've thought to myself before about where the obvious and open and notorious and unguarded danger spots in the system are.

It could also be used to help the government spot weaknesses they had not thought of. Still, as a new teacher myself, I can only cringe at the ignorance of giving such an assignment without clearing it through admin first. At least the principal was understanding and stood by the teacher. He could have very easily fired him over it.

I also think it has the potential to be an educational assignment, but it would have to be approached VERY carefully..

[SpiritWarrior]

I think if it had been in America the teacher would have lost his job instantly - just because of the hysteria attached to anything using the term "terrorist".

While I do get it, that this was just an assignment, I am a little unnerved that they are being asked to think of ways to kill so many innocent people. I mean, during a time of mass shootings in schools etc. who knows what ideas these could give to a person. But then, I think games like Simcity emulate disasters that kill thousands, and show it to you as it's happening, or have you play as evil characters who have no mercy or conscience...I guess this is really no different. Many people's first instinct is to be horrified before putting it into perspective. I guess the headmaster had the capacity to see this.

[VulcanRider]

Before you can plan to defend against terrorists, you have to learn how to think like one. Still, the teacher should've run it by someone higher up first.

[Lord of Alcohol]

yea Spirit has it right, this would get you fired here before you even typed up the lesson plan.

There are the obvious things like hitting utilities,landmarks etc but there are are far more insidious ideas that while causing less initial damage or casualties would cost us more in the long run.

[Sever]

Originally Posted by VulcanRider Before you can plan to defend against terrorists, you have to learn how to think like one.

While this is absolutely true, i don't think there are any year 10 students on the payroll of any government anti-terrorist agencies.

It reminds me of something that has bugged me for 15 odd years. When i was in year 9, our social studdies class spent a little bit of time learning about the darker stuff in human society. Jack the Ripper among other things. We were then given the task of writing a horror story and were given a green light to include any content and language (including explicit swearing, rape, etc) that we wanted. You can prolly imagine what most of the people did with such free reign. I wrote a particularly juicy story about a massacre at our school camp earlier that year and got top of the class. Anyway, sometime afterwards, a group of students were removed from normal classes for 2 full days and participated in non-curriculum activities. It was all very odd the way it happened. Usually when a group of students was removed from class it was because they'd done something exceptionally bad, but the teachers kept reassuring us that we'd done nothing wrong, nor did they say why exactly we were selected. The exercises were psychological in nature and none of us could see how they fit in with anything we'd normally do at school. The students were such an odd bunch too. Impossible to group together by any common trait. Any common trait except the horror story... I worked out at some stage that the people selected were the ones that had included real people in their horror stories; Teachers, friends, classmates etc. To this day, i am convinced that the whole horror story thing was part of a greater phsycho-evaluation exercise. I've since spoken with people from other schools who also recall doing similar, apparently pointless exercises when they were in school. I never did find out for sure though.

I'd love to catch up with my old teachers to find out if there really was a widely implemented government initiative to uncover and process potentially unsound individuals at a school age...