I remember being asked to complete all manner of oddball assignments in my high school days, even to read an essay made up entirely of student mistakes which I was asked to correct in an English class. Nothing though prepared me for the headline I saw on The Blaze today which read: “Death Panels 101-Chilling High School Assignment Makes Students Decide Who Lives and Who Dies”.

Yes, dear reader, you read that right-and so did I. If this doesn’t make your blood run cold on its own, continue on and your circulation will get downright chilly.

The assignment, which was given in a high school sociology class that was taught to the freshman and sophomores at an Illinois school was intended to be a lesson on “societal bias”.  The scenario posed to the students is that there are ten people who are in “desperate need” of kidney dialysis but the hospital only has the resources to treat six of them which means that the high school students are being asked to sentence four people to death. Even more disturbing is the fact that the “patients” are described by their professions or other labels describing their perceived worth to society (included are a doctor, a lawyer, a minister, a prostitute, a housewife, an ex-con, a college student and a disabled person). This should throw up a red flag unto itself since this conjures up visions of Nazi Germany and their murder of large numbers of those “unfit” to belong to the “Master Race”.

According to the copy of the assignment sent to Fox News reporter Todd Starnes, the student had chosen to spare the cop, the minister, the doctor, the lawyer and the housewife. This meant that the same student had determined that the college student, the hooker, the disabled person and the ex-con should die a death that would include a toxic buildup of metabolites in their bloodstream that could have been avoided-making it needless in a first world country. Evidently, little Johnny or Suzie wasn’t up on their Shakespeare (assuming since this is a Common Core state they might not have been exposed at all to the Bard) and his familiar line “First, let’s kill all the lawyers”.

But seriously folks, is this really the sort of problem solving exercise we want to see coming home in our children’s backpacks?

The principal of the school in question balks at the mention of Death Panels and explains that the exercise was meant to teach students the fact that social biases exist and that students see things from different perspectives. Well, as Todd Starnes points out in his commentary “Thats all well and good if your the doctor, but try telling that to a nine year old disabled kid”.

I think that Mr. Starnes wrapped this entire story up with the greatest quote, and I could not agree more with it:

“St. Joseph-Ogden High School’s social studies class sounds more like a recruitment center for the Department of Health and Human Services.”