A group of high school freshman in Illinois were reportedly required to determine who would live and who would die
in a chilling class assignment that school officials say was nothing
more than a lesson in social bias. However, critics argue it sounded
more like a lesson in death panels.
The assignment, reportedly administered
by the sociology unit at St. Joseph-Ogden High School, involved a
fictional group of 10 individuals who are all in desperate need of
kidney dialysis. If they don’t get the treatment, “they will die,” the
lesson reads.
The next part of the assignment is down-right haunting.
“That means four people are not going to live. You must decide from the information below which six will survive,” it states.
Starnes says he reviewed one student’s
worksheet and the student chose to save the doctor, lawyer, housewife,
teacher, cop and Lutheran minister. That means everyone else involved in
the fictional scenario died, including an ex-convict, a prostitute,
college student and a disabled person.
While some critics, like writer Lenny Jarratt, who first reported on the assignment, say the lesson eerily resembles death panels, St. Joseph-Ogden High School Principal Brian Brooks told Starnes that it was just a lesson in social bias.
“The assignment has nothing to do with a
‘Death Panel,’” Brooks said, adding that the lesson was intended to
teach students about social values and how people internalize biases
based on professions, race and gender.
“The teacher’s purpose in the element
of the assignment you are referring to is to get students emotionally
involved in order to participate in the classroom discussion,” he added.
But Jarratt told Starnes that there are many other ways to teach students about social values and biases.
“Why would they go down that road — especially with freshmen in high school?” he asked.
Starnes also appeared skeptical,
writing: “No matter what how the school tries to explain it, a group of
young kids were deciding who got to live and who got a death sentence.”
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