Once we have eliminated the people we don't like. Seeing them drown will be inspirational. This smells of one of those "team building consultant" things, or maybe a motivational speaker.

They field these kind of questions in leadership classes: "Would you look the other way if a student cheats on an exam?" You can get answers like: "Yes, if he was poor and I knew he works hard, but the question was really beyond his field of experiences." That's probably the kindest example I've seen.

But, you can find the same kind of thinking in public administration when the community leadership board wants to jump process, all they have to do is search for the higher purpose to justify their actions.

This Florida test is just the lowest form of the same flawed reasoning. What it tests for is a students prejudices. It says more about the person who put the test together, because he assumes that assigning value to people is normal.

And you know what? They use this same kind of reasoning when they do court settlements where there is massive loss of life. People who died are judged based on what they do for a living. For example, the survivors of a janitor who died in 9/11 would have received far less than an executive who died in the same event.

Whether that is fair or not is up to everyone's own interpretation, though that's how they do it, no matter how you feel about it.

I would save whoever was closest to me.

back in college but I no longer remember what the purpose was.

I wonder if there is not some kind of triage like that when it comes to disasters like Katrina?

Although I would probably leave Justin Beiber

It's difficult to imagine anyone could be dense enough to create, approve, and give this test to school children- even in Florida.

Mr. Bobo must be pretty special. Mr. Hagerman, not so much. In the real world, Donald Trump kicks everybody else out of the boat and uses the extra seats for what's left of the ship's champagne and maybe a woman or Mexican (that's why they love him).

I'd inject my own scenario.

Everyone in the multiple choice would be saved (even Donald)... The only fucker we'd watch slowly sink as we pissed on their forehead, even though my hypothetical life raft has room for thousands, is the asshole-shitface-fuckhead that came up with this hypothetical in the first place.

I'm a polar bear, and I'm hungry.

There are too many variables, why would I chose someone solely on skin color, gender, creed, job? Let's discuss bigotry now, OK?

As if context mattered when we're interpreting things.

What use would have been made of this? Was it tongue in cheek or part of some larger education strategy or purpose? Was it part of a campus- or distict- or state-wide initiative, or just the teacher's or the teacher's team's own doing?


Back in the late '70s and early '80s there was a wave of conservative outrage over questions and assignments that strike me as being very similar to this given in elementary school.

Then the buzz word was "values clarification". Make the kids recognize their values, what they were and how they worked, and how they might positively or negatively influence themselves or others.

I don't know if there was a parallel wave of liberal outrage over this technique or not, or what the official edu-speak phrase was for it, but the conservatives billed this as a liberal idea. I only know my own social setting back then.

Perhaps this could now be classed under "morals education" or "character education," more recent buzzwords for very similar, as far as I can tell, types of things. It's rather like having kids do an implicit bias test of some sort, now isn't it? Let them know that their choices say something about their thinking that they're unaware off.

I mean, even another DUer saw a particular kind of moral bias in that answers given in the OP's example.

sink the life boat because you can walk on water .

biases, I could see it. But from their own statement, that doesn't appear to be quite the point.

Designed for people to examine ideas, prejudices, and problem solving. It was much more complex than what is being shown. Also, this may not be age appropriate for the target students.

How bizarre