Teachers defend shock tactics in DWI program

OCEANSIDE, Calif. — On a Monday morning last month, highway patrol officers visited 20 classrooms at El Camino High School to announce some horrible news: Several students had been killed in car wrecks over the weekend.

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.

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Michelle de Gracia, 16, was in physics class when an officer announced that her missing classmate David, a popular basketball player, had died instantly after being rear-ended by a drunken driver. She said she felt nauseated but was too stunned to cry.

"They got the shock they wanted," she said.

Some of her classmates became extremely upset, prompting the teacher to tell them immediately it was all staged.

more... http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5833544.html

Mr. Torquemada, the DARE resource teacher?

i can't imagine it will provide the desired results.

"I was just trying to scare the school straight. I wanted them traumatized. That's how they got the message."

The whole idea that you could/should use psychological manipulation like that to "teach" is revolting. Causing emotional trauma like that is a prosecutable offense... lets see some lawsuits ;)

This kind of thing is a terrorist tactic, not a teaching method.

way of "teaching". Now we're terrorizing our own children. Sounds like this person would be better suited to work for the rethugs.

makes sense to me, in some ungaudly way. farking buttcheeks without a tune would do something like this. Maybe they should go to a daycare and tell all the kids their mommies and daddies died in dwi crashes, then they can bring in georgie the clown to say "surprise, we lied".

I'm sure whoever thought this up is in line for a promotion to the government's interrogation teams, because you'd have to have the heart of a torturer to do that to someone.

anonymous accident photos around - that would do the trick. When I was a cop, the most disturbing thing I saw was the brain tissue of a 16 year old kid on pavement after he flipped his car, went through the sunroof and slid head-to-road down a hill. Another DWI-related accident I luckily missed involved a car that burst into flames. The driver died and they said his skin split like a hot dog. If that doesn't keep a kid from driving drunk, nothing will.

This is *not* the way to go about teaching these kids..