In a school district in New Jersey, fifth grade students gossiped about a special teacher that had been helping their regular teacher prepare them for the NJ ASK state administered exams. To reward the students for their hard work preparing for the state exams, this assistant teacher promised the children that Lady Gaga would Skype Video Chat the students. The teacher claimed she worked for MTV previously and that she had the connections to make this Skype video conference. The day finally arrived and the video conference was a success with all students truly believing they had met Lady Gaga online. The students all received personalized autographs to top things off. A few days later, the school notifies parents that the whole thing had been a lie and that the teacher had done this video conference trick in four different elementary schools fooling teachers and students alike. The teacher lied to hundreds of students and allowed an complete stranger enter the classroom and completely lie to them. A student had analyzed the autographs she received with a variety of them online to discover that the whole plan was fake. This has a variety of ethical implications as it involves children who are merely growing up. I can't imagine these students ever having trust or confidence in older people as someone as trust worthy as a teacher blatantly lied to them all. Lying is never good! The reputation and credibility of the teacher and school district is damaged for allowing something like this to happen. What is worst of all is that this involves children who are still learning the up's and down's of life. There is nothing worse then being betrayed at such a young age. You hold on to it forever.
-Victor
That is crazy that the teacher went to such lengths to bring in an imposter. I can't believe that. Your right, as a child this type of thing stays with you forever, its a memory that they will hold onto and relate back to bad things that happen in their life, or funny things if they see it in a humorous light. This relates to the extra-cinematic identification process of imitating and copying. The lady Ga Ga imposter felt Ga Ga was so important and huge that copying or imitating her identity was crucial. This type of effort amazes and kind of scares me. It's a little obsessive.
ReplyDeleteOh my. This enrages me. I do not believe that a teacher would betray her students in such a way when they trust and believe in her. I know that when I was a child I never doubted my teachers and saw everything that they said to be true. I also believe that the teacher must be unstable to even do something like that.
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