Friday, October 11, 2013

No... Death Panels? Ridiculous!

I mean, those conservatives who said that ObamaCare would naturally lead to a death panel are just crazy and overreacting! It's not as if the left would even go so far as to begin indoctrinating our children to the idea:

A classroom of 14 and 15-year-old Illinois high school students was assigned the task of deciding the fate of ten fictional characters in an exercise that critics called a lesson in death panels.


The assignment was part of a sociology unit for freshmen and sophomore students at St. Joseph-Ogden High School in St. Joseph, just east of Champaign. The story was first reported by Champion News.
The lesson involves 10 people who are in desperate need of kidney dialysis.
But there’s a problem. The local hospital only has enough machines to support six patients.
“That means four people are not going to live,” the assignment states. “You must decide from the information below which six will survive.”
According to the worksheet I received, the student opted to spare the doctor, lawyer, housewife, teacher, cop and Lutheran minister.
The others weren’t so lucky.
Among those unceremoniously dispatched to the hereafter were an ex-convict, a prostitute, college student and a disabled person.
It sure looked like a lesson on death panels to Jarratt.
“The first thing I thought was they were desensitizing kids to death panels,” he told me. “They are preparing them for it.”
Principal Brian Brooks told me that assessment is way off base.
“The assignment has nothing to do with a ‘Death Panel,’” he said.
He said the purpose of the lesson was to teach students about social values and how people in our society unfortunately create biases based off of professions, race and gender.
“The teacher’s goal is to educate students on the fact that these social value biases exist, and that hopefully students will see things from a different perspective after the activity is completed,” he said.
That’s all well and good if you were the doctor — but try telling that to the 9-year-old disabled kid.
“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 said.
Jarratt said he suspects there’s more to the assignment than just a lesson in bias.
“There are so many other ways to teach about that,” he said. “Why would they go down that road — especially with freshmen in high school?”
No matter what how the school tries to explain it, a group of young kids was deciding who got to live and who got a death sentence.


Source.

Oh. They are. And the excuse given for the assignment is as transparent and flimsy as wet tissue paper.

8 comments:

Always On Watch said...

Off topic: explanation for my recent absence from the blogosphere.

Brooke said...

Oh, AOW!

Woodsterman (Odie) said...

I'm 66 so I'd better watch my step. The Obuggerites are gunning for me.

Ducky's here said...

Hospitals aren't making those decisions today?

Maybe you've heard of triage?

And what does this have to do with the Affordable Care Act?

Brooke said...

Ducky, that's not how triage works. ERs and hospitals triage based on medical urgency; who the most critical patient is, not socio-economic indicators as in the assignment.

Also, I don't know a single hospital that would say, "Well, we only have so many beds, guess you're gonna die."

They'd call around and transfer to a facility with an open bed.

However, this will start to happen under ObamaCare, because resources will be limited and rationed.

And as for how this story pertains to the 'affordable care act'... Reread the post. This is indoctrination to get the next generation to expect such rationing and accept it without question.

Brooke said...

These kids are being conditioned to callously just 'give grandma a pill.'

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U-dQfb8WQvo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DU-dQfb8WQvo

Z said...

Brooke, thanks for saving me teaching Ducky the difference; it's a HUGE one and, of course, you did it well.

I've been thinking about your post and believe that there are SO MANY stories in this vain that we need to stop ignoring them, letting the leftwingers convince us we're being silly for worrying. It's coming in a deluge and I believe we need to really wake up and start fixing things like this.
I'm no fan of Palin but she was 1000% right on death panels...too bad she picked such an inflammatory name for them because it allowed the left to jump on her terminology and the point got lost.
Again.

Brooke said...

Z, agreed. I don't think Palin's terminology is overly inflammatory, however. That the left goes so apoplectic over the term means it rings with truth.