It appears that a middle school in New York is training kids in how to shake a baby so hard that it kills them with a hands on assignment where kids are forced to shake a mechanical baby until it stops crying–i.e. until they shake it to death–in a class unit on Shaken Baby Syndrome.
Lennie Jarrett of ChampionNews.net spoke to the parent of a middle schooler in Churchville-Chili Middle School in Churchville, NY, earlier this week and the parent said that his child was traumatized by having been forced to “kill” a baby in class.
The father noted that the kids were told that shaking a baby too hard could kill it and offered the example of a man who was in jail for shaking his own child to death. Then kids were ordered to symbolically kill a baby right there in class using a mechanical baby.
“The teacher demonstrated shaking and killing the baby. Once done, she told the students they were going to take turns killing the baby and then warned, “Just don’t go crazy, the doll is heavy”. They were instructed to shake it continuously as the ‘baby’ screamed and screamed until all the parts of the ‘brain’ had lit up indicating which part of the brain was being injured. They were instructed to shake the ‘baby’ until it was quiet. Until it was dead. My son was the first to refuse to participate. He said his teacher was shocked. Others followed his lead.”
The father also noted that his child told him that some of the kids thought it was funny to kill the baby and one even threw the baby against the wall while another slammed the baby on a desk.
The unit was taught in Mrs. Amory’s 7th grade Family and Consumer Sciences (FACS). Naturally this assignment is a Common Core aligned class.
The FACS class was described this way on the school website:
Career and Technical Education which includes Family and Consumer Sciences is a program designed to prepare students to meet their responsibilities as family members, consumers, home managers, wage earners, and parents. This course is designed to prepare you to become “Life Ready.”
The page was subsequently deleted from the school website.
It is nearly impossible to understand how a class that shows kids how to shake a baby to death–then forces kids to actually shake a mechanical baby to death, even symbolically–can teach children that babies are delicate and shouldn’t be shaken until they are dead!
Principal Giulio Bosco had vowed to investigate the class, but in a statement from Mr. Bosco and Superintendent Pamela Kissel the criticisms of the class were called “inaccurate.” The statement, though, didn’t answer to any specific allegations and only issued its blanket “inaccurate” denial.
