Obamacare life lessons-Death Panels 101

Obamacare life lessons-Death Panels 101

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”.

Fox News Photo: Who Lives and Who Dies?

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.”

Chilling, isn’t it?

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11 Comments
  • kevin says:

    It’s tiime to take your tin foil hat off.

    I’ve seen these type of group exercises for 40 years. They have different scenarios like there’s 15 people on a raft and each day the raft is sinking a little bit and in order to save the larger group one person needs to go overboard every 3 days or a group of people are stranded on a desert island and you only have a boat that carries 5 people. Who gets saved? It’s the same premise for the reality TV shows … who gets tossed off of Survivor or Big Brother. The group determines who needs to leave. No one is getting murdered. It’s an exercise in group dynamics. Nothing more. Nothing less.

    You have to understand that every issue that you see as a “horrible social consequence” is not the fault of Barack Obama and your attempts at trying to tie him to every socialist, communist, or other decision you disagree with is pathetic.

    Get a grip on reality.

  • Jennifer says:

    Kevin,
    You must be the single most judgemental human being I have seen in awhile. There are no “attempts” to link Obama to communism and socialism-he does that himself whenever he speaks. He regularly refers to his desire to “fundamentally transform” this nation and if you are familiar with the two totalitarian systems you referred to earlier it is easy to see. Who is needing a grip on reality now? Perhaps France would be a better home for you-since it seems you would have preferred to sip a Cafe Au Lait and watch the Germans come goose stepping down the Champs Elysees while explaining away their previous bad acts to your fellow citizens in the 1940’s. People like you are on the wrong side of history yet again.

    How’s that tin foil chapeau feeling now?

    • kevin says:

      Your use of a foreign language and big words were too much for me to understand your point. Sorry.

      • Elrond Hubbard says:

        We understand your problem Kevin, so in the future we’ll use small words (no more than two syllables) and avoid foreign languages.

  • noah says:

    ha ha… nobody makes tin foil anymore… that’s just silly

  • GWB says:

    Somehow I knew Kevin would be here. However, he does have one point in there: this is just a variation on the “Survival Scenario”. I have my problems with that ‘game’, as the basic assumption is that you have already decided that you won’t save everyone. But, he is right in saying that it is a common exercise to teach critical thinking skills to students.

    However, what makes it so chilling is its proximity to current events. Kevin evidently sees it in a vacuum, and the teacher might very well *not* have considered it in any other way. But, it certainly is problematic when we are rapidly descending into the tyranny of government-rationed scarcity – especially, as Jennifer points out, when that scarcity is not really necessary.

    Looking at this dispassionately, it’s an interesting change to the normal scenario, since there’s no group survival component. Often, in the survival scenarios there’s an element of “what will ensure our survival as a group” involved. So, you pick both the fit women to bear babies, and you might pick the cop and the ex-con for their weapons knowledge. Here, it is simply an exercise in who is worth more. I think that makes it a bit *more* chilling, personally. Then, once you re-introduce the background of current events, it becomes very problematic. I hope there are some kids who stood up to the teacher with statements like “well, I know there’s a hospital three counties away that has a dialysis machine that is under-utilized, so I’ll send the strongest folks there for treatment” and refused to buy into the idea.

    • GWB says:

      I also have to say that this:
      “You have to understand that every issue that you see as a “horrible social consequence” is not the fault of Barack Obama and your attempts at trying to tie him to every socialist, communist, or other decision you disagree with is pathetic.”
      is partly true, though terribly ungrammatical.

      All these “horrible consequences” aren’t necessarily the fault of Obama – most of them are the fault of the progressive agenda over the last 50 years, with Obama’s administration simply being where most of those assaults on decency and liberty will come to a head in the next few years (or have already). Getting rid of Obama won’t stop this. Getting rid of the Democrats won’t solve this. A wholesale rejection of the progressive, big-government disease is the only way to fix things.

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