Sometimes a story comes along that is literally jaw-dropping. One of those is in today's Daily Mail. As part of a programme teaching children about the Holocaust, teachers at St Hilary's Primary School in East Kilbride took an unbelievably irresponsible approach to impressing the horrors of the Final Solution on their pupils.
Instead of presenting the class of 11 year olds with the facts, which are shocking and disturbing enough in themselves to communicate the grim reality of the Holocaust, they decided to subject their pupils to a traumatic experience of their very own.
The Deputy Headmistress, it is reported, announced that by order of the Scottish Executive some of the children judged to have "low IQ" were to be separated from their classmates and sent away - perhaps to an orphanage. They would never be allowed to see their parents again. She then went on to tell them that their parents had been made aware of the decision, too, implying that they endorsed it.
Understandably, the children picked out were worried and upset. An authority figure in their school had told them that she, the Government and their parents had agreed that they were to be separated from their families.
As a lesson, it is unlikely to be forgotten, but it is of no perceivable value. These young children were put through a wholly unpleasant experience, and humiliated in front of their classmates. The teachers in charge seem to have a low opinion of their own ability to communicate history through normal teaching, twinned with a reckless disregard for the well-being of their pupils.
This is not a case for crying "something must be done", or demanding central government produces a new set of rules banning teachers from scaring schoolchildren. In the best case scenario, such a move would produce irrelevant rules at large expense. In the worst case, the clause against scaring children would undoubtedly be used to clamp down on genuinely worthwhile activities such as outward bound events.
What we really need to stop teachers like these from pursuing such abject nonsense is for parents to be given real power over schools. At the moment, you have to pack your child off to school where the teachers can be as irresponsible, incompetent or downright harmful as they want and as a parent you have very little power to change things.
The parents of children subjected to this deeply unpleasant experience should have the power to gather the support of other parents and change the school's policy, get the person responsible dismissed or punish the school as an institution by moving their children elsewhere.
