Scared Straight, or Scared Insensitively?
Last week we got an email from a reader wondering why no local news agencies had reported that Manhattan Beach's Mira Costa High School had suffered one or more fatalities (he wasn't sure the number) and seen one of its own students arrested in relation with whatever incident caused the death.
We hadn't heard anything about it, so I called over to Manhattan Beach PD, who quickly cleared it up: The day our worried reader heard of this hubub on his scanner was the very day local agencies and the school had teamed up on a drill run meant to hammer home what awfulness can result from drunk driving by simulating such a tragedy on campus.
The drill is called Every 15 Minutes and has become a popular program on high schools across the country. We ended up running a short "Ask Us" column wherein I informed the aforementioned reader and anyone else who may have been worried that the "fatality" was faux and the student was "arrested" for show.
Apparently the same sort-of recent event went too far down in Oceanside, where in El Camino High School's spin on the program many kids didn't know ahead of time that it was a simulation and positively freaked when police came on campus to report the drunk-diving deaths of a few of their peers.
A short chunk from an Associated Press story on the controversy:
"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."
"As seniors prepare for graduation parties Friday, school officials in the largely prosperous San Diego, California, suburb are defending themselves against allegations that they went too far."
"At school assemblies, some students held posters that read, "Death is real. Don't play with our emotions."
What do you think? Did they go too far or is shock and temporary trauma an effective way to teach the lesson without kids actually having to learn it the true hard way?
Write me anytime with your thoughts.