Who would win in a fight between all the children in an elementary school vs all the teachers?
Let’s say 400 kids 1st - 5th graders vs 50 teachers ages 35-60 mostly women.
Teachers if you threw all the rules out the window.
They’re smarter, taller, stronger, more resourceful, and have verbal and emotional intimidation on their side. Teach could swing a desk and take out three or four brats without breaking a sweat.
At first I thought like Cisico but then I did the math.
Assuming equal class sizes, you’ve got 80 in each grade level.That’s 240 3rd-5th graders, ( I don’t really count the 1st and 2nd graders, they are too smal to do anything at the start. Thats nearly three per adult, you get them to hang on and let the littler ones start kicking and biting, I think you could be in some trouble.
At first I thought like Cisco but then I did the math.
Assuming equal class sizes, you’ve got 80 in each grade level.That’s 240 3rd-5th graders, ( I don’t really count the 1st and 2nd graders, they are too smal to do anything at the start. Thats nearly three per adult, you get them to hang on and let the littler ones start kicking and biting, I think you could be in some trouble.
It all depends. Do the kids swarm like ants or do they fight ninja-style, waiting patiently for their chance to get their ass kicked?
Since I happen to have an elementary school teacher right here on site, I just walked over to her and asked.
Her first response: the teachers. Then she thought for a moment and said “I’m not really sure.”
I think she’s being modest. I’ve seen the teachers she works with. A lot of them work out.
The rest of them carry pepper spray.
Even if the teachers are stronger, and smarter (well, some of them, anyway), the kids would probably win by sheer numbers. I think it would more happen as swarming than planned attacks, though.
It would really depend on the physical condition of the teachers.
If they were all like my second grade teacher (an older woman, not in shape), the kids would win. However, if they were like the 4th grade teacher (who played baseball in college and was subsequently a feared paddler) when I was in 2nd grade, the teachers would win.
The numbers would be no match for cunning and strategy on the part of the teachers. They have keys to rooms, and are smart enough to plan. Sure, if a bunch of kids just launched themselves at a teacher, the teacher’d probably go down. But if the teachers get together, they could set up a perimeter and deal with the brats at their leisure. Start with the little ones, because I bet a swift kick would take out anything second grade or below. After that, just set up conditions so the kids can’t swarm: build obstacles out of desks, scatter their backpacks on the floor, and so on. The kids will have to negotiate rough terrain, and the little bastards won’t be able to launch an effective group attack. The teachers will then be able to take 'em out individually.
I hope it’s not a sign of mental illness that I find this thought so very amusing.
The teachers.
They would understand the need for sacrifice and have a capacity for thoughtful cruelty that a child does not.
No matter how many teachers went down in the initial uprising/swarming, once the first lull came, the object lessons would begin.
A child would not even think to stab an enemy in the gut, pull out his entrails, and send him stumbling back to his own people (“surrender now or this continues” note carved into his forehead and inked with silver nitrate from the chem lab) to slowly and horribly die among them. An adult would. And such a thing would have more effect on the children than it would the adults.
Plus, adults can drive. Menaing they can drive over the little bastards. One car in the schoolyard and the numbers issue goes away.
I have more ideas. Where is this uprising of which you speak?
I think many of you are forgetting the architecture of a school and that can play a very large part in this war.
In Florida, schools are basically trailers linked together by permanent covered walkways. I mean, they’re nice trailers with AC and everything, but it is designed for portability and speed. Since there are no walls along the walkways, this leaves convoys very open to attack while in transit. Advantage to the hellions.
Schools more northern, which are fully enclosed and thus protect the hallways are more easily controlled and the fifty teachers can form defensive positions to handle the onslaught. Think Helm’s Deep here folks. Advantage teachers.
If it is in an enclosed area, the adults definitely have the advantage. But on an open field, the teachers will probably have a much greater battle due to the sheer number.
It would depend on whether this was a random sneak attack in which all the kids attacked at exactly 10:53; or an organized teachers vs. kids duel with opposing sides.
In the sneak attack 10:53 I figure only a few teachers would survive the initial attack. That would only leave the already battered survivors and the stereotypical fat office staff. Kids win in a matter of minutes.
In an opposing sides duel the teachers hands down. Like Happy said they have the mobile armor, the car. It would be a route with many children taken prisoner and forced to do long division for the rest of their youth. :dubious:
Elementary is not my chosen area–for exactly this reason. 
I’d say that one bullhorn turned up full-blast, and the words “If any of you takes one more step, there won’t be recess for a month…and you can kiss the chocolate milk and sweet rolls goodbye.”
If the teachers can band together and effectively take out the jungle gym…or the entire playground (did you say there was a lab? oh hell, you could probably use the stuff they sprinkle on vomit and some of the chalkboard cleaner to fashion a makeshift bomb), the teachers can win by sheer intimidation…and they’d never have to touch a hair on the little darlings’ heads.
Of course…I don’t think about this stuff.
:eek: I don’t think we are talking to the death here, are we?
If so, how many people do you know are willing to gut and mutililate a small child? That number better be zero. I’d even say that reasoning plays on the kid’s advantage because who could hit that poor, defenseless little AAAARRRGH!
See what I mean?
I’m gonna go for the students if it was a planned thing. Heck it wouldn’t even have to be planned, the kids could envelope the school in seconds with a cry of “Fight!”. It’s happened before. At my secondary school, even though they were older, about 200-300 kids could traverse the entire grounds in a stampeding horde in less than a minute. You did have to get out of the way sharpish or die from trampling (Ah, the good old days). If the teachers had no ideas, the little un’s could be in the buildings and on the teachers before one cry went out. And 8 kids, kicking, biting and scratching for every teacher. It’d be a massacre. :eek:
Age and treachery win out over youth and reflexes any day.*
–SSgtBaloo
*I don’t know who to attribute this one to, but I didn’t coin it.
Yeah, you didn’t go to the same elementary school as me.
I think you are under estimating kids. Whenever I was in K-1st grade (I remember because I moved afterwords) I was full aware of pain and infliction. I had an early ability to also join kids together. I would probably be able to organize a very good assult. I also went through phases of loving desert storm/military/GJ Joe. I had regular strategetic battles. One of my friends (Will on the Hill, as I called him) had an older brother that we routinly fought against. I was able, on more than one occasion, to bring him to his knees by sheer planning and knowing his psyche. Me and my other friend at that time were able to succesfully develope a cement which we used to pave his uncle’s drive way which actually worked. We were aware of chemicals.
Keep in mind, i was 5 or 6 at those times.
By 2nd I had learned how to anger teachers with only implications. I could make teachers horribly upset without them being able to call me out on anything. I would innocently color my paper dark blue when they wanted a light blue, confusing them and sending them into the realm of indignation.
In fourth, though, all my crafts had been honed. The music teacher was quite a mean old hag, to me and my 10 year old mind atleast. I was able to plan and implement an assult on her, attacking her weakness which was asthma. She had an inclination to fall in a weezing fit at the hands of a well crafted cologne. I doused my young, martyring body with some good ol’ Santa Fe, Satan’s own fragrance. After using one bottle on myself I passed the others out to my class mates. If it wasn’t for her keen eye and how pleased I was with myself, she would not of sent me out of the room while hagging horribly, doubled over with fits of fighting for her precious oxygen, thus saving herself.
Oh, yea, I was also apart of the class that sent Mrs. Neese to the hospital with a heart attack, although that was not so much my doing as it was a combined effort and her old age.
In fifth I got moved to an inner-city school surrounded by the projects. I had a fleet of thugs I could use to cater to my whim. If someone took my hat it was returned regardless. I wasn’t a bully about it I just knew how to survive and protect my small stature. I was also able to take a rather unsure twit, who thought it was fun to make fun of me, and pit all of his old friends against him, making him crumble into the depths of antisociality. And, to top it all off, there were actually people at that school who could, and did, beat kids into unconciousness.
One last point: My mom’s school now has a kid in fifth who is well into his teens. He is a very big boy.
My point? The criminal mind of an elementary school student is not as innocent as you would like to think. They are also not as weak as you would be lead to believe. Imagine a force of very mobile students who could easily fit into ceilings and under desks lead by some kids like myself. Using desks and tables as a moving sheild, trash cans for armor, chalk dusters for distractions, and pencils for shrapnel, I say kids.
It’s a fight. The purpose of fighting is to end the fight as quickly as possible. If gutting one child stops things immediately, then do it before anyone else gets killed.
If I’m a teacher, and the little buggers come out of their seats with murder (or even mayhem) in their eyes (or, if that school-announcement ludspeaker comes on and I hear the principal saying, "Get back! Back or…aggghhhhh…), then the first throat I get hold of gets twisted. I wave my little, twitching, bug-eyed proof of my seriousness around, maximizing the spraying of blood and spittle, and ask, very calmly, that those who don’t want to end up like little Jenny please return to their seats and turn to chapter five while I go see what all the other ruckus is about. Any who wish to try their luck may bring it the fuck on. That oughta restore order. I can then aid my fellow teachers-union members before writing the mother of all grievances and scheduling some parent-teacher conferences (Little Jenny’s parents don’t need to come; I obviously don’t teach theri child any more).
Kids don’t understand the nature of force, or even their own strength. How many kids have you seen kick someone in the nuts and then laugh about it while their target writhes in pain? So I have to restore order before they accidentally go too far and kill one of my fellow teachers. And if there’s no “accidentally” about this and they planned it all, then they’re the enemy and I don’t have to feel bad about quelling the uprising or the means by which I do so.
(and, before I get Pitted by mothers and teachers and every other member of the offenderati saying "I hope you get neutered/ you should never be around children, this is a SURREAL example, people. The children are faceless and theoretical. So if that makes me a faceless, theoretical babykiller, so be it.)
Oh, and ZebraShaSha?
Teachers might not be able to discipline you, but they know who the troublemakers are, and, absent rules and regulations, will be pragmatic about ending the threat. As soon as I recognize a coordinated assault, you die first.
And kids, especially the ostracized and/or the well-behaved, have enough motives to sell each other out. A hundred bucks is chump-change to me, but a fortune to a kid. The longer this goes, the better I do, and the worse it is for you when the smoke clears.
Just look at this: Kids have more to lose and will crack first.
Bring it, kiddies, bring it. I’m a bad, bad man.
ZebraShaSha, How many hours did you have to make license plates to come up with the SDMB subscription fee?