Manchester school in War of the Worlds incident.
I was gonna post this. Depresses me that our schoolchildren can be so gullible these days.
Reading the article, I can easily see why the kids got upset. I mean, c’mon - It’s the Head Teacher telling them ‘they should go home and say “final farewells.”’
If it had been adults, I’d have expected a bit more skepticism, but not from school kids conditioned to trust and respect their teachers.
Shame on Mr. Hogan for not having thought that through.
They are pretty old kids (14) and I don’t remember being conditioned to trust and respect my teachers. I respected about 3 of my teachers, and that was because they were brilliant at teaching.
This is why it’s depressing. If this had been when I was 14 the whole assembly would have patiently waited for the punchline.
I’m guessing you’re not British. Only a very small majority of people at my school would have believed such nonsense.
You’d think the first thing one of them would do is get to a computer lab and check the net instead of breaking down in tears.
Me too.
I’m not certain that gullibility is the issue. The asteroid story seems plausible enough to a 14-year old, there has been enough background noise about Earth-asteroid collisions in the serious press the last few years to lend it credibility, it’s startling enough that even fairly sharp kids might not think of it in the context of “live your life to the full” day, and it isn’t readily verifiable. Not to mention that these kids have already been trained for most of the last decade to accept what adults wearing neckties in a school building tell them is fact.
Once, I did a presentation for a class of much younger children (I’m not a teacher, by the way). I stood up in an auditorium and told them that an army of giant pink spiders wearing tennis shoes was headed toward the school in stolen fire trucks. Then we discussed why, even though I was an adult wearing a suit standing before them in a school telling them really scary information, not one of them ran screaming from the room. It became a discussion of critical thinking and why we decide to believe some things we are told and not others. The incident noted in the OP reminds me of that, only without the clues that would tip off the unwary. Of course, the school’s purpose was that the kids accept the asteroid story, a farce would not have underlined their message. They might as well have approached each kid individually and told them their parents were dying.
And I’ll stipulate that none of us would have been fooled, of course of course. I’m just talking about the kids who actually had this happen to them, and were.
I disagree, strongly. (i the case of Manchester 14 year olds)
Huh??? Which ‘serious press’ newspapers have you been reading?
I’m guessing you’re not British 
Well, there’s this: http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0405/p03s01-stss.html
And I think I can dig up a cite that sort of indicates that Manchester 14-year olds can indeed be fooled by such a story, in the right circumstances: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/4025293.stm
I found the bbc story odd/depressing/totally against the norm. As I and others have said, when we were that age we would have sat called bullshit right away.
The news media (even, or perhapse especially ‘serious’ media) is well known for making a mountain out of a molehill. You don’t have to be well-informed to know that the chances of being killed by an asteroid are pretty f*cking remote. Even if you are 14.
I mean come on. We have our news telling us our chips will give us cancer. Standing too near a mobile phone will fry our brain. wine is healthy, wine isn’t healthy, wait, wine is healthy, no wait wine isn’t healthy, actually it turns out wine is healthy, there’s an asteroid coming to earth in a day and it’s going to kill us. Iraq has weapons of mass distruction that hit our major cities in 45 minutes.
OoooooooK.
Peace, Lobsang. I was merely saying that asteroid/Earth collisions have entered the public consciousness enough to make the story plausible to 14-year olds who may not be avid news consumers, and whether the school’s little game should have been successful or not, it evidently was. It certainly seems as though the school tried hard to make the sale: this wasn’t a test for their student’s critical thinking skills, it was purposeful deception perpetrated upon students by their teachers. That’s why I’m suggesting that Manchester’s 14-year-olds might deserve the benefit of the doubt. In your last post, in fact, you outline one very good reason to give the kids a break – the fact that dubious science is often presented authoritatively by the media.
I don’t mean to react. It’s just that in my day we had a heck of a lot more scepticism. I don’t deny that these kids took it seriously. I’m just surprised. maybe it has something to do with it being a RC (Roman Catholic) school. I know nothing of the differing school systems, but maybe this school has the type of ‘god fearing’ kids who’ll believe anything.
And my point about the media is that it highlights the difference between real news and bullshit.
Which public are you refering to?
And I’m sorry but I can’t imagine any normal 14 year old finding the possibility of such an event plausible. Laughable, funny, forgettable maybe. not plausible.
But if they really do, then things have changed a lot in 11 years.
I totally agree with you, when I was 14 there’s no way we’d have fallen for that.
Maybe kids are dumber these days.
I’m with you that it may have something to do with being a RC school.
What goes on in British schools that school children would be so cynical and distrusting of authority figures?
I’m frankly a little shocked that conditions would be so… Teachers are supposed to be honest and straight-forward with their students, else their ability to teach is seriously compromised.
On second thought… If they make a habit of telling the student body that they’re about to die horribly, I suppose I wouldn’t trust them either.
Tranquilis It’s not something that goes on in schools it’s something that goes on in society. And it’s not something one should be shocked about. Personally I find the opposite phenomenon to be a shocking problem. People who believe all the shit they get told are people to worry about.
Oh, and I’m not saying they are distrusting of teachers. Just that they have a healthy sense of cynicism such that if a teacher tells them a meteor is going to kill them tomorrow they will be, well, sceptical.
I’m not at all surprised that many of the students believed the story. Think of the situation: special assembly called, only 9th graders. Teachers up front, stonily tell them that they are going to die, kiss your family goodbye. I’m sure there was initial disbelief, but continued poker faces from the teachers would soon put that to rest. Sure, some would be skeptical, but they wouldn’t be interviewed by reporters, would they? Enough would have believed this to cause a stir. Obviously, since that’s what happened.
Hell, I’d probably have believed back then – 9th graders are pretty angst/doom ridden anyway. This was a cruel, stupid stunt. I agree with The King of Soup, they might as well have told them individually that their families had died in accidents.
Don’t ever underestimate the stupidity of people in aggregate – individually we seem OK, but in groups we’re idiots. Look at the election…
You people are just not listening. These are British schoolchildren. British schoolchildren are not supposed to fall for things like this. British school children (and people for that matter) are culturally very different. British life is dull and uneventful. British people grow very strong senses of reality. British poeple don’t believe all the hype about national security regarding terrorism (for instance), and rightly so. If I were that headmaster I’d be totally amazed they believed this.
Er, let me get this straight . . . You don’t think it’s possible that an asteroid could hit the Earth with devastating consequences?