The 6 Most Horrific Lessons Ever Taught in Elementary School
As a society we put an incredible amount of trust in our teachers. They're alone with our kids for most of the day, and what they teach them will shape their worldview. The potential for things to go wrong is enormous.
And as you'd suspect, things often go enormously wrong. Irresponsible or downright crazy teachers wind up teaching our kids lessons we'd rather they'd kept to themselves.
Never Be Afraid to Get A Little Feces On Your Hands
At East Iberville Elementary School in Louisiana, they don't take shit from little kids, literally. So when a seven-year-old boy managed to clog up the toilet at school his teacher did the only rational thing she could think of: She made him unclog it with his bare hands.
It started when little Trevor ate too many Pop Tarts for breakfast. Feeling the need to take care of business, he asked to go to the bathroom and, in his own words, "made the toilet overflow with toilet paper and poo." Such a feat by a seven-year-old is something we at Cracked actually find fairly impressive and deserving of proper respect.
His teacher however, failed to recognize his achievement in its proper light and wanted to punish him. Either that or she had a fear of plungers or something. And because the sight of a crying seven-year-old elbow deep in a toilet wasn't sad enough, she threatened to make him use his teeth next time. Afterward, she encouraged her class to taunt the boy by calling him "sissy hands," which must be some kind of devastating slam in Louisiana, since "shit hands" was so much more appropriate for the situation.
It turns out the teacher was part of an "alternative" teaching program, at least that's what the school said after police arrested her and charged her with juvenile cruelty. After the arrest, the school had to close down the other alternative programs, including the home economics sweat shop and pre-school coal mine.
"Hurry up or no story time!"
We're glad to hear that at least one school board member wants to fire the teacher. The other members are apparently on the fence, maybe because she didn't actually follow through on her threat about making the boy use his teeth.
Let's Play "Holocaust"!
They say experience is the best teacher. Hands-on lessons are easy for things like learning to draw a picture of a turkey by tracing your hand, but harder for subjects like history. This didn't stop the teachers at Apopka Memorial Middle School in Florida, who decided that it would be really fun to have "Holocaust" day at school. And as we learned while researching this article, the Florida public school definition of "fun" translates roughly to "mentally scarring."
As students showed up on the big day, certain kids were given gold stars to wear. These students were supposed to be the Jewish students and throughout the day they were persecuted by not being able to use certain water fountains and not allowed to sit down. You know, just like in the Holocaust.
Neither the students or their parents were told about the day because teachers said they didn't want students to be prepared for the terror and fear (well, at least annoyance and mild confusion) that was to come. Apparently the teachers felt that you really couldn't half-ass something like the Holocaust.
As one boy told his dad afterward, the only thing he learned was that he really didn't want to be a Jew. We're pretty sure this is the almost the exact opposite of what the teachers were hoping the kids would learn. Or was it?
Parents were predictably upset and flooded the school with complaints. Even Jewish groups were left palming their faces and cursing silently in Yiddish. Sadly, all the backlash from the day caused the school to cancel the "Master/Slave" role playing exercise.
However, it went on as planned at another school...
Let's Play "Slave Ship"!
Most teachers have that voice of reason in their heads that tells them when they're going too far with a child. This voice usually chimes in before they try to tie up their students' hands and legs with tape. That same voice probably gets a little louder when that teacher is trying to decide whether or not to stuff those students under a desk.
Not part of the curriculum.
One teacher in White Plains, New York was apparently deaf to that voice of reason and instead chose to listen to her voice of terrible, terrible ideas.
During a history class for seventh graders, a teacher was trying to impress upon her students that slavery really sucked. Fearing that her students wouldn't take her word for it, she felt that the only way to really get the point across would be to make the students feel what slaves went through. Just like how you need to push people off a building to show them how hitting the ground would really hurt.
Third Period Introduction to Polar Bear Safety.
To make things even more realistic or something, the teacher forced one student to take part in the demonstration after not getting enough volunteers. And of course, the teacher, who was white, chose a black student to participate because she really wanted to make a Cracked list.
When they were finally released, the student who was made to pretend to be a slave decided that getting tied and stuffed under a desk was some serious bullshit and told her parents. When they complained to the school, the superintendent admitted this was a bad idea if it upset the student.
Uh, yeah, we're thinking if you have a middle school student who loves being tied up and shoved under a desk, you actually have a bigger problem on your hands.
"Nature is Cruel. Here, Let Me Demonstrate."
School is supposed to prepare kids for real life. We don't want our kids to think life is just about video games and embarrassing, ill-timed boners. Because let's face it, life is about working and taxes and the embarrassing inability to get boners as we get older. One teacher in Plant City, Florida felt that the current school curriculum wasn't keeping it quite real enough and decided to remind her kids that nature is one cruel bitch.
It all started with the birth of two cute bunny rabbits and then things went downhill from there. The bunnies were rejected by their mother, who was maybe busy turning tricks to feed her carrot habit or something. Being the agriculture instructor at the school, the teacher knew that the only solution was to bury the bunnies alive. Well, that or bottle feed them, we guess.
This idea didn't sit too well with the students, who for some crazy reason refused to kill the bunnies.
It was at this point that the teacher decided the only way these kids were going to learn about life would be to watch as she tossed the bunnies in the hole, whacked them a couple times with the shovel and buried them herself, possibly while screaming, "WE ARE THE BUNNIES, AND THE SHOVEL IS GOD!"
After some students finished puking from witnessing the bunny murder, they went home and told their parents. The teacher admitted that, in hindsight, bottle feeding--or pretty much any other idea really--might have been the better choice after all. A spokesman for the school district said the school would do things differently in the future by getting release forms from the students before making them watch the inhumane killing of any more defenseless animals.
Your Personal Worth is Determined by Popular Vote
In Port St. Lucie, Florida...
Wait, what the fuck? That's three of our entries that are from Florida. What the hell is going on down there?
Anyway, in yet another educational failure from the Sunshine State, a school teacher saw a room full of happy, care-free five-year-olds, with their innocent laughter and cute, dimpled faces, and knew she had to put a stop to it. She needed to teach them the harsh realities of cliques and how to exclude the undesirables from their social circle.
So she singled out a particularly unpopular little boy, and decided to play a game of classroom Survivor. The other students would get to vote as to whether or not he would be kicked out of the classroom, and each student would be allowed to tell the boy just what they didn't like about him. We think it was probably like an episode of Rock of Love, but with fewer STDs.
It seems that even all of this still didn't fulfill whatever agreement she signed with the Devil however, because there are now allegations that she actually had to rig the vote to get him tossed. That's right, in addition to prejudice and intolerance, the teacher also threw some voter fraud into that day's lesson plan, 'cause screw it, finger painting gets boring after a while.
Unless...
Wait, have we mentioned that the boy had Autism? Yeah, the teacher knew that.
Before the class could go completely Lord of the Flies however, parents found out about the situation and the teacher was suspended. The state attorney investigated and found the incident did not meet the criteria for emotional child abuse. Makes sense; as students in Florida's school system, who knows how many tortured animals and Holocaust reenactments they had seen by the age of five.
Homework for Thursday: Design a Car Bomb
High school used to be simple back in the day. Some reading, some writing, some arithmetic. Kids today have it much harder what with all the physics, honors English and planning terrorist attacks.
And all the whatever the fuck is going on here.
Which brings us to a teacher in Colorado, who got into some trouble when the creative writing assignment given to the students breached a few national security laws. If you're thinking the kids were asked to come up with a terror plot for their assignment, congratulations! You're catching on!
The superintendent of the school, flanked by some men in dark suits and ear pieces, deflected the criticism afterward by basically calling the freshman class a bunch of idiots. He claimed that they misunderstood the assignment. As explained by the teacher, the assignment was actually to "illustrate an act of terrorism by a foreign government on American soil."
You know, by writing down the details of how the attack was carried out. Totally different.
And too bad because show and tell day was going to be awesome.
Do you have something funny to say about a random topic? You could be on the front page of Cracked.com tomorrow. Go here and find out how to create a Topic Page.
If you think teachers are all to blame for screwing up the youth of America, then you haven't checked out 8 Insane Ways Parents Are Politically Brainwashing Children or 7 Things "Good Parents" Do (That Screw Kids Up for Life).
And stop by our Top Picks to see Seanbaby giving a group of fifth grades a tour of the offices.
And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get dick jokes sent straight to your news feed.
