Fake News

[Martin Hash]

How about understanding the motivations of gang-bangers? Or drug cartels? Or transsexuals? Really, at what age should all students be encouraged to consider deviant behavior?

When you're old enough to drink, you're old enough to get your dick cut off, or belong to a cult, or join ISIS, not before.

[Speaker to Animals]

So should we train high school kids on firearms, assaults, going house-to-house, and maybe explosives as well? I mean.. while we are preparing them to fight terrorists, we should just go the whole way.. or are we just teaching them to identify with terrorists??

I'm not following you, at all. Do you think high schoolers are age 4 or did you read it wrong and are now changing your point?

Here's what I do believe - teaching kids things ahead of time is preferable to teaching them after the fact. Who is most easily swayed by cult mentality? Who are the enemy targeting for recruitment? Is it 50 year olds or young kids?

We had a chapter on cult mentality in high school. I consider it along those lines - here's the warning signs, here's what happens if you fall in with a cult, here's what to look out for. I think the class served me well.

Knowledge is power.

Even if it was symmetric: can you imagining the reaction if the same age children were encouraged to think like soldiers & aim their pretend finger-guns at other students.

I didn't really read all that much about it. Is it a terrorist training class or a class designed to teach how someone gets into that mindset as a way to help kids avoid falling into that trap? I'm 100% against training kids in how to be terrorists. lol

You said we should teach high school kids to think like terrorists to better fight terrorism. I am just pointing out that, if you really believe that, then we need to train them to be good soldiers, intelligence officers, etc. Otherwise, we just teach them to be terrorists.. which I am pretty sure you know is the point.

If I believed what you asserted, then I would convert our high schools into boot camps.

[K@th]

How about understanding the motivations of gang-bangers? Or drug cartels? Or transsexuals? Really, at what age should all students be encouraged to consider deviant behavior?

When you're old enough to drink, you're old enough to get your dick cut off, or belong to a cult, or join ISIS, not before.

I think knowledge is power and the more we know about why people do the things they do, the more we can combat it.

You said we should teach high school kids to think like terrorists to better fight terrorism.

You're going to have to provide the quote where I said that.

What I said, in reality, is that it never hurts to know what the other side is thinking and how they got there.

Does the class include weapons instructions, how to build a suicide vest, how to drive a car into a building after filling it with explosives? If that's the case, yes, I'm 100% against that.

If the class is focused more on the poverty, lack of education, empty promises of virgins, etc., and how a young mind can be easily brainwashed into making decisions against their best interests, then yes, I 100% support that.

[Martin Hash]

Hey, college, where students are no longer children, is a great place for that.

If we're going to lower the bar to simply "knowledge," then the anti-abortionists need a shot too; and NAMBLA; and people who starve themselves because they insist it increases their lifespans.

[K@th]

Hey, college, where students are no longer children, is a great place for that.

If we're going to lower the bar to simply "knowledge," then the anti-abortionists need a shot too; and NAMBLA; and people who starve themselves because they insist it increases their lifespans.

Sociology class, 1983, 11th grade. I had to take the pro-choice side and the pro-death penalty side. In 11th grade American history I had to defend slavery.

In grammar school, a cop came to class and showed us cocaine and heroin (it may have been a slide show) and lit something to make the room smell like pot.

Point is, knowledge is power. Nobody was training me to be pro-life, pro death penalty, pro slavery, pro cocaine.

I'm against coddling children to the point where they get to college and don't know anything about how the world actually works. We have this issue with young minds being corrupted into killing themselves. How does that happen? Why does that happen? Shouldn't we be learning about that?

You need a better argument if you want me convince me that hiding information from high schoolers, who have more access to information (good and bad,) than any generation in history, is a good thing.

[Martin Hash]

When I was in 2nd grade, we watched B&W films of nuclear explosions that caused people's faces to melt off. Every half year we practiced "Duck & Cover" & how to get to the Fallout shelter because The Bomb. Our teacher explained it was highly unlikely to happen. To this day, GenXers are frightened to death of N*U*C*L*E*A*R...

When I was in 7th Grade, I debated on the side of Pro Choice. I had no idea what I was saying, just parroting what I read, but compared to other 7th Graders who couldn't get past the slogans (like some folks on this forum), I was undefeatable. Really didn't know what I was talking about until late college but because of that early indoctrination, it was hard to not be Pro Choice because that was my position as a kid. As people here know, my Pro Choice stance is now a reasoned Liberty over Life argument, very nuanced, certainly incomprehensible to a child.

[BjornP]

I'm against coddling children to the point where they get to college and don't know anything about how the world actually works. We have this issue with young minds being corrupted into killing themselves. How does that happen? Why does that happen? Shouldn't we be learning about that?

You need a better argument if you want me convince me that hiding information from high schoolers, who have more access to information (good and bad,) than any generation in history, is a good thing.

+1

Guidance > Safe Spacing.

Aside from the assumption that a 16 year old kid is going to automatically want to become a sucide bomber or some sort of terrorist, because a teacher explains the motivations and beliefs of some foreign, or historical, terrorist organizations or radical movements, is founded in a mindset that rejects the notion that you grow into an intellectually and morally mature adult, instead believing that you somehow turn into one at the age of 18, 21 or 32 or at whatever age you get your get full rights to liberty. This is the mindset that breeds "safe space" mentality in young adults, the mentality that they must be "protected" from "offensive" ideas. Or to paraphrase: "They learned it from watching you!"

Also, about the notion that it is "irresponsible" or "dangerous" to teach young adults at age 16+ about why someone believes the way they do, or why a foreign country does what they do, before they get to college: Haven't people here repeated the call for less focus on college as the ultimate end goal of education? Should only college-educated young people learn what the world around them believes in and why they do so? Is a young, 17 or 18 year old college kid more intellectually able to recognize that an explanation of why Palestinians would blow themselves up to kill a few Israelis is not an encouragement to do the same, than a 16 year old still in high school?

[Mercury]

The lesson plan could be interpreted as an attempt to educate children about some of the roots of terrorism, but it seems more like an effort to make them choose a side in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

https://unctv.pbslearningmedia.org/reso ... PAyhlKZOb9

1. Next direct students to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/mid ... estinians/ key_documents/1681322.stm, which includes a map of the partition plan and a summary of U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181. Have students continue with a focus for media interaction by asking them to examine Resolution 181 and fill out the fourth part of the Document Probing Student Organizer. Ask students to share their thoughts about these documents aloud. Ask them to draw two faces that show emotions -- one face for a Palestinian Muslim after seeing these documents, and one face for an Israeli Jew -- after seeing these documents on the bottom of the Document Probing Student Organizer. (For example, a student may draw a happy face for an Israeli Jew and an angry face for a Palestinian Muslim). Call on students to share what type of faces they drew and why.

Ok kids, do you support the oppressors or the oppressed? Pick one.

[BjornP]

The lesson plan could be interpreted as an attempt to educate children about some of the roots of terrorism, but it seems more like an effort to make them choose a side in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

https://unctv.pbslearningmedia.org/reso ... PAyhlKZOb9

1. Next direct students to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/mid ... estinians/ key_documents/1681322.stm, which includes a map of the partition plan and a summary of U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181. Have students continue with a focus for media interaction by asking them to examine Resolution 181 and fill out the fourth part of the Document Probing Student Organizer. Ask students to share their thoughts about these documents aloud. Ask them to draw two faces that show emotions -- one face for a Palestinian Muslim after seeing these documents, and one face for an Israeli Jew -- after seeing these documents on the bottom of the Document Probing Student Organizer. (For example, a student may draw a happy face for an Israeli Jew and an angry face for a Palestinian Muslim). Call on students to share what type of faces they drew and why.

Ok kids, do you support the oppressors or the oppressed? Pick one.

Where does it say "oppressor" or "oppressed"? If they draw a happy smiley face (*sigh* at that bit of infantilization) under an Israeli Jewish face, does this mean they're for the "oppressor"? There are ways to view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in more ways than simply "oppressor" vs "oppressed". Many, many more ways. Especially if you're neither a Palestinian or a Jew.

While having 9th grade kids drawing smiley faces instead of using words, and making reasoned arguments is also rather infantilizing, wether one considers Israelis as "oppressors" or not will depend on how one interprets the evidence. Wether you have sympathy with one side, a second side, or a third side in a conflict, cannot really be determined untill you actually know all the sides' arguments.

[Mercury]

The lesson plan could be interpreted as an attempt to educate children about some of the roots of terrorism, but it seems more like an effort to make them choose a side in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

https://unctv.pbslearningmedia.org/reso ... PAyhlKZOb9

1. Next direct students to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/mid ... estinians/ key_documents/1681322.stm, which includes a map of the partition plan and a summary of U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181. Have students continue with a focus for media interaction by asking them to examine Resolution 181 and fill out the fourth part of the Document Probing Student Organizer. Ask students to share their thoughts about these documents aloud. Ask them to draw two faces that show emotions -- one face for a Palestinian Muslim after seeing these documents, and one face for an Israeli Jew -- after seeing these documents on the bottom of the Document Probing Student Organizer. (For example, a student may draw a happy face for an Israeli Jew and an angry face for a Palestinian Muslim). Call on students to share what type of faces they drew and why.

Ok kids, do you support the oppressors or the oppressed? Pick one.

Where does it say "oppressor" or "oppressed"? If they draw a happy smiley face (*sigh* at that bit of infantilization) under an Israeli Jewish face, does this mean they're for the "oppressor"? There are ways to view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in more ways than simply "oppressor" vs "oppressed". Many, many more ways. Especially if you're neither a Palestinian or a Jew.

While having 9th grade kids drawing smiley faces instead of using words, and making reasoned arguments is also rather infantilizing, wether one considers Israelis as "oppressors" or not will depend on how one interprets the evidence. Wether you have sympathy with one side, a second side, or a third side in a conflict, cannot really be determined untill you actually know all the sides' arguments.

Right, but this is where the lesson plan kinda fails. It could be useful as part of a broader study of the topic. On its own, however, it is overly simplistic (I didn't follow all of the links - just skimmed the plan and watched the videos). The motivations of only one 'side' are provided. The bomber explains that he is reacting to Israeli attacks on Palestinian settlements, but no explanation for those attacks are given, except by the bomber himself (Israelis are racist).

It doesn't say "oppressor/oppressed", that was just my interpretation, because it seemed to encourage children to attach an emotional reaction to an oversimplification of a complex issue.

A good teacher could use this material, as a supplement to a more thorough examination, but I'm not sure that that is the intent (this is where my biases and assumptions come into play, I suppose)