Children Alarmed by Teacher's 'War of the World's' Style Abduction

And these are supposed to be the SMART people that are teaching your kids?
They should all be fired and replaced with some common sense people.

It just goes to show that even in the UK society has changed. In the late 60's, the "aliens" would have had a great deal to fear from the schoolchildren, who probably would also have cheered the teacher's "abduction". At that time, "The Belles of St. Trinian's" (a movie) was a fairly accurate depiction of British schoolchildren. Now parents want well-mannered schoolchildren who never give any trouble, and, alas, the children oblige.

And the lesson in this is..........yeah. there isn't one. Pathetic. Sounds like they had NOTHING better to do, although they were supposed to be teaching.

Sounds like a playbook from the US Gov't. The Repubs are telling us that the aliens are taking away our Medical Benefits and the Dem's are telling us to get on the spaceship.

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Tyggie, the difference between this and kids playing cops and robbers or cowboys and indians is that the CHILDREN initiate the game not the adults. When it's an authority figure, it puts a different dynamic into play. Children trust the adult figures and are taught not to question them. Or did you miss that lesson somewhere? I played cowboys and indians when I was a kid but it was a child initiated game. I bet you would scare the kids just like those teachers did. When I was in grammar school, we had Santa come visit the first graders. When I was in first grade, I thought it was actually Santa. When I was in eighth grade and we answered the children's letters to Santa, the children trusted us that their letter came from Santa. The thing is the maturity level of the age group making all the difference. It sounds like the teachers didn't think this through. To give them the benefit of the doubt, I bet they thought it would be fun. But they should have thought more about the potential reactions.

Waa waa waa... we should wrap our children in bubble wrap and protect them from real life. Everything is about me... me, me me... I was raised on the monster movies and science fiction of the 50s. At 10 years old I would be afraid to go to sleep for fear that something would come out of my closet or out from under my bed. My parents calm demeanor and insistence that it was only make believe gave me the confidence to continue on to be a productive, responsible tax paying and voting citizen.

This was a cool creative skit the teacher did to do something out of and extraordinary. This sort of performance was never done when I went to school, come to think of it nothing creative or inspirational really done when I was in school.
KUDOS to the teacher, who probably planned, scheduled and paid for it out of her own pocket.

That is soooo funny. Crybabys.

I bet the same parents who are so upset about this tell their kids that presents come from Santa Claus!

I think that it was an interesting way to get the childrens brains thinking about other things other than tv. but wouldnt have been more interesting to play the Orson Welles radio broadcast of 'War of the Worlds' rather than leading them to a UFO that had crashed. Maybe see the reaction you would have gotten from them listening to the broadcast thinking it was real, but only the older children. The younger children might have a harder time understanding its not real. But I still think that people overreact to something so small

It sounds like there were good intentions behind this and that total outrage isn't necessary. I applaud the school for thinking outside the box about how to get students thinking creatively, but I think more thought, planning, and research about best practices is required for something like this to be successful. I am an arts in education drama specialist, so I lead role play experiences like this all the time. Just today I went on an imaginary expedition to Antarctica with a group of 5-9 year old children. The great thing about children is that letting them know ahead of time that it's just pretend does not diminish their ability to to believe and enjoy. In fact, it allows them to be more fully engaged because they're not pre-occupied with wondering whether it's real or not, or, for the older children, with feeling like they need to prove they know that it's just pretend.

When my kids were little, a local parenting newspaper had an article about how not to scare kids at Halloween. I thought this was ridiculous - Halloween is all about a nice scare! So we did what we always did, made that occasion as spooky (but not bloody - we're not into that slasher crap) as possible. My kids are grown now, and to this day, Halloween is one of their favorite holidays - they decorate their houses and spook kids in their own neighborhoods. Anybody ever heard of the original fairy tales that the Bros. Grimm collected and sanitized? They were grisly - intentionally so, to help teach kids about the realities of life. Get a clue - you probably let your kids see the most awful, gory movies, but you're otherwise afraid of frightening them? If your child is timid, then help them adjust and feel secure, otherwise, let them have the fun of a scare.