Ah, the day of mobile video ubiquity is almost upon us.
You can’t even tie up a student with an electricity cable, allegedly humiliate him in front of his peers and taunt him a few times without the footage being transmitted around the globe and (one imagines) Youtubed before you can say the phrase ‘BEG FOR MERCY’.
Have a read…
Two teachers have been suspended after mobile phone footage showed a 16-year-old pupil being tied up with electrical tape and taunted in front of his classmates at a new academy in Kent.
Police and social services have investigated at Folkestone Academy and parents have been told of the incident in a letter from the headteacher of the school that condemns the incident and describes it as a “prank” that went wrong.
The film of the incident on November 28 shows the sixth-form pupil lying face down with his hands tied behind his back. He is surrounded by other pupils and a male teacher is crouched in front of him.
At one point in the five-minute clip a voice, believed to be a teacher’s, says: “Give us a shout when you are ready to start grovelling.” It ends with the pupil being released by another teacher. The boy was reportedly distressed.
I would imagine he was distressed. Unless he was filmed laughing away in a jovial nature, I reckon it’s fairly safe to assume he was distressed.
A source, an unnamed source, reckoned this, according to The Guardian:
“It was like something you would expect in Guantánamo Bay or an al-Qaida video – not in a school. The school has made a lot of noise about being tough on bullies and raising standards, and this kind of thing just makes a mockery of that.
Apparently the students at the school have to sign a 53 page set of pledges related to behaviour – a contract of behaviour or something like that. I wonder if there’s a page covering the use of mobile handsets in class?
Strange, strange. Couldn’t find the video on Youtube…
Sounds like a misguided recreation of the Third Wave experiment from the late ’60s — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave — or something.