A school tells its students that 4 of their own were killed in a text driving accident.

This is great preparation for the real world. Kids need to learn that authority figures lie to them whenever they judge it's in their best interest, that authority figures aren't above false flag operations if those operations serve the needs of the authorities, that authority figures are willing to use the crass manipulation of emotional appeals to achieve their ends, and that the ruling class presents as truth whatever serves their purposes.

They also learn that those who hold power can use that power to create mayhem far, far beyond what those who have power only over themselves and their own actions are capable of creating. No single student could start a rumor that would have the massive negative impact such a staged show on the behalf of the authorities has created.

Overall, it should have a great impact on the student's respect for authority, their willingness to take statements from such figures at face value, and allow them to more accurately define the relationship between the rulers and the ruled... if only critical thinking class hadn't been cancelled.

Probably not the intended lessons, but valuable lessons nonetheless.

dinky_dau said:

I hate cellular technology with every fiber in my being, so I am gonna take a 'hard line' here and say that the school did the right thing. Really, they could have gone even farther.

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How could they have gone farther? By actually killing the kids?

When I was in high school, they did something similar with drunk driving. Only they told us beforehand what they were doing. I can't remember what the statistic was at the time, but whatever it was, X people per hour are killed by drunk drivers, they announced the names of that many students who had been "killed" by drunk drivers. The students were selected at random and given signs to wear so that we would know they were "dead." It got the students thinking and talking about drunk driving without lying to us.

This whole thing reminds me of a story my husband told me about his church. In the middle of the church service, a bunch of masked people with guns came in and shot the pastor, and he fell down dead in front of the congregation. They announced that anyone who didn't believe in God was free to leave, and everyone else would be killed. You know, like all atheists do. My husband didn't believe in God, but he was afraid to move. Then, the pastor got up. He wasn't dead after all. It was just a stupid church stunt to make a pathetic point about faith! Yay!

Emotional manipulation is not education. Whoever dreamed up that stupid stunt, and whoever agreed to play along should be fired.

(BTW, by far the most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers I see are men in large, white pickup trucks. The larger the truck, the more likely they are to tailgate, cut you off, and flip you off. The second worst are women in expensive white cars, who generally seem oblivious to the fact that anyone else is on the road.)

rugcat said:

Apart from the idiocy of pulling such a stunt, I would guess the average teenager is going to be pissed off over the hoax and think "what a load of crap." And will tend to view all further warnings about texting with considerable skepticism. It's not only stupid, it's counterproductive.

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I'm with you on this. It's dishonest and if I were one of those students, I would have reacted by feeling resentful and possibly humiliated.

People who are already conscientious about this stuff don't need to be patronized and traumatized like this (I spent most of my teen years extremely anxious about death), and people who don't want to believe it could happen to them can be very good at justifying that belief to themselves. Some people might "see the light" from an exercise like this, but I think my reaction would have been to either feel patronized or shut down emotionally and use the fact that it was fake to convince myself not to listen to anything they had to say. If they insult you by employing trickery and emotional manipulation, it's easy to dismiss the message entirely.

Old Hack said:

In the UK it's illegal to use a mobile phone without a hands-free kit while driving, and it's definitely not allowed to text while driving. I'm surprised that's not the case in the US.

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It's illegal in many states, and in many cities where it's not state-wide.

Gosh! Teenagers wouldn't break the law. I mean, it's THE LAW.

it was a good idea the first time they did it. but apparently they ran the NEWS in different ways all day. once would have been fine.
but maybe this is all just a waste of time. people are gonna do what they do, regardless of anything. i mean....they showed that graphic infomercial about teens in a car crashing while texting...in slo mo, to boot! and people are STILL doing that...texting and driving, i mean.

When I was at school, one of my classmates was actually killed in a car accident. He wasn't a really close friend, but I remember the announcement in the morning assembly and the emotional impact it had on me. He was the first person I knew who died (apart from my Nan who died when I was too young to really understand), his was the first funeral I ever attended. Even though I wasn't particularly close to him, his death had a profound impact on me and I just can't imagine how betrayed I would have felt if it had turned out to be some sort of stupid trick to make a point.

Devil Ledbetter said:

(BTW, by far the most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers I see are men in large, white pickup trucks. The larger the truck, the more likely they are to tailgate, cut you off, and flip you off. The second worst are women in expensive white cars, who generally seem oblivious to the fact that anyone else is on the road.)

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Again, we need self driving cars.

And yes, we had one that crashed.

And in the time between we started testing self driving cars and the first crash, almost a hundred thousand people died in regular crashes in the United States and a few million were injured. But no, no, no, tell me how I shouldn't trust an automated car.

regdog said:

The students who were claimed to have died were in on the deception and full participants.

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What does that have to do with my post? The kids who were told the fake announcement weren't in on it. Only the fake victims were.

DancingMaenid said:

What does that have to do with my post? The kids who were told the fake announcement weren't in on it. Only the fake victims were.

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Butting in to say it's a miscommunication, I think.

"If I was one of those kids" could mean either the school at large, or the kids whose names were called. If they picked four kids' names at random and said "these guys died" without telling those kids first, that would have been weird.

*sigh*

This sort of stunt is insulting to the responsible students and emotionally abusive to everyone who wasn't in the know. I am so tired of people acting like teenagers can't be talked to on the level and must instead be manipulated or scared or punished into modifying their actions.

Zoombie said:

Again, we need self driving cars.

And yes, we had one that crashed.

And in the time between we started testing self driving cars and the first crash, almost a hundred thousand people died in regular crashes in the United States and a few million were injured. But no, no, no, tell me how I shouldn't trust an automated car.

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that's because you're only ONE automated car. let's see how well they drive when EVERY SINGLE CAR ON THE ROAD is nothing but automated.....

Well, better because they wouldn't have to deal with a bunch of sleepy, distracted, texting, drunk, barely competent overdressed monkeys who have only managed to keep casualties so low because we have really well designed cars.

Seriously, I'm a crossing guard. If I had a dollar bill for every time I or one of the kids I try and get to school safely almost got hit by a driver blitzing through the cross walk, I wouldn't need a Patreon.

Silva said:

*sigh*

This sort of stunt is insulting to the responsible students and emotionally abusive to everyone who wasn't in the know. I am so tired of people acting like teenagers can't be talked to on the level and must instead be manipulated or scared or punished into modifying their actions.

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I don't think this stunt was a good idea at all. At the same time, if I caught my (hypothetical) kid texting and driving, he or she would lose driving privileges on the spot. If he or she is not mature enough to understand the potential consequences and alter his or her behavior to mitigate them then he or she is not ready to be behind the wheel of a guided missile.

LittlePinto said:

I don't think this stunt was a good idea at all. At the same time, if I caught my (hypothetical) kid texting and driving, he or she would lose driving privileges on the spot. If he or she is not mature enough to understand the potential consequences and alter his or her behavior to mitigate them then he or she is not ready to be behind the wheel of a guided missile.

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I agree that that is a reasonable consequence. It's also one that can be doled out respectfully rather than dramatically or insensitively.

Silva said:

I agree that that is a reasonable consequence. It's also one that can be doled out respectfully rather than dramatically or insensitively.

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Absolutely. Being overdramatic or insensitive is a surefire way to lose a teen's respect.

LittlePinto said:

I don't think this stunt was a good idea at all. At the same time, if I caught my (hypothetical) kid texting and driving, he or she would lose driving privileges on the spot. If he or she is not mature enough to understand the potential consequences and alter his or her behavior to mitigate them then he or she is not ready to be behind the wheel of a guided missile.

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The hardest part is getting the message across when so many adults do it too, especially their parents. I've run across more moms with phones in minivans over the years than I have erratic teens. In fact, I haven't seen that many teen drivers at all in recent years.

More cars have hands free interfaces now for taking calls, though even those are somewhat distracting. And of course, they only work for verbal calls, not texts.

Roxxsmom said:

The hardest part is getting the message across when so many adults do it too, especially their parents. I've run across more moms with phones in minivans over the years than I have erratic teens. In fact, I haven't seen that many teen drivers at all in recent years.

More cars have hands free interfaces now for taking calls, though even those are somewhat distracting. And of course, they only work for verbal calls, not texts.

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It scares me how many adults text and drive, honestly.

James D. Macdonald said:

I've been an EMT in my community for coming up on 20 years. Do you want me to tell you some stories?

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Honestly, I think an assembly with a real, live EMT from the community telling them stories about what the EMT's seen, possibly with videos for illustration and graphic impact, would work better than the shock tactics.
Tell them what's happened on the actual roads they travel everyday, at locations they know, (probably not to people they know because of confidentiality rules) stuff they can visualize.
Real stuff told to them by someone who was actually there, dealing with the aftermath, is probably going to have as much or more impact than a made-up scenario that they can write off as 'more adult lies'.

Because, yeah, hearing that a classmate died may make you feel horrible, but once you know the truth, the feeling of betrayal sets in.

Zoombie said:

Well, better because they wouldn't have to deal with a bunch of sleepy, distracted, texting, drunk, barely competent overdressed monkeys who have only managed to keep casualties so low because we have really well designed cars.

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Also, if they're all networked, they'll all know where they all are. And, even more importantly, an automated car's driving ability doesn't reset with every new generation of drivers, it just keeps getting better and better.

ETA: Then again...

frimble3 said:

Honestly, I think an assembly with a real, live EMT from the community telling them stories about what the EMT's seen, possibly with videos for illustration and graphic impact, would work better than the shock tactics.
Tell them what's happened on the actual roads they travel everyday, at locations they know, (probably not to people they know because of confidentiality rules) stuff they can visualize.
Real stuff told to them by someone who was actually there, dealing with the aftermath, is probably going to have as much or more impact than a made-up scenario that they can write off as 'more adult lies'.

Because, yeah, hearing that a classmate died may make you feel horrible, but once you know the truth, the feeling of betrayal sets in.

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This might have an effect. It's basically taking the philosophy behind showing those "Red Asphalt" movies one step further and putting a more human face on it.

The hardest thing to get past (and not just with teens, either) is the special snowflake syndrome--that belief that the rules are there for other people to follow, but you personally are a much better driver/texter/drinker or whatever than mere mortals. I seriously knew guys in high school, college (and in grad school too) who thought they were sooooo good at holding their alcohol that drinking didn't affect them the way it did most people.

I'm guessing a lot of people also feel this way about cell phone use and texting while driving. The thing that really was a game changer with drunk driving, along with the public service messages and education, was when it became a more serious offense than just a traffic ticket. Some people still do it, but it's much less socially acceptable than it once was. I don't know if there's a way to do the same thing with texting while driving that things like checkpoints, designated drivers, and tipsy taxi programs have done for drinking and driving.

Automated cars may be the ultimate solution to this issue, but given the fact that they'll be rather expensive at first, and available in limited makes and models, not to mention the length of time most people own a car (I just bought a new car, so I likely won't be in the market for another for a decade or so), it will likely be decades before most cars on the road are self driving.