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Secondary education

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First day in school. Are we in Germany 1933?

63 replies

andlondon · 21/04/2020 13:18

(I believe my post will be removed, as there is no democracy here and all think like one, but I cannot keep silence anymore).

First day in school (online) after holiday. DD got the following problem to solve (and kids widely discuss it on a chat):

In a hospital ward there are four terminally ill people. Three need medicines that are not in stock and cannot be provided. Without the medicines they will die. The fourth will die anyway. The three can be saved with organ transplantation: first with heart, second with lungs, third with liver. What should be done: (a) nothing and then all four will die. (b) kill the fourth and transplant his organs to other three.

Have you seen the movie “Life Is Beautiful” 1997? In fascist Italy the school children were given a problem: ‘How much will the country save if they stop feeding the mentally ill?’

So our children in school are hinted with the following: the government will not lift a finger in order to produce masks, ventilators, protective equipment etc. We don’t need to think about this. We just need to decide: who will die and who will live. Whom to connect to ventilator and whom do disconnect. Whom to send to intensive care and whom to send home to die.

If this is not fascism then what is this?

The government and the prime minister did not lift a finger to close airports, to trace and isolate infected and to test people when the epidemy was already ravaging in four countries: China, South Korea, Japan, Italy. The government did nothing to produce ventilators, masks, hand gel, protective suits. How did South Korea and Japan manage to completely stop this? Why in Germany 4,500 dead and in UK 16,000?

Why the criminal government and its prime minister are not investigated and not sent to court for sabotaging the struggle with the epidemy, for the treason to their people, for 16,000 dead?
Why instead of saying that “We will struggle for every ill person and we will do anything to save lives” the prime minister says “Oh, you need to prepare yourself to loose many of your relatives and friends”? and why that prime minister ignores five meeting in a row of the COBRA (Emergency Cabinet)?

Why do we need, like the North Koreans, to clap to NHS - where doctors and nurses are not provided with basic equipment and die from the infection, whilst in other countries healthcare workers have all they need? Why do people clap to them like to clowns who dance under the circus dome without any protection?

Is human life valued at all in this country or we just need to say “Oh, I am so sorry that people die”? “Oh, it’s such a shame there are not enough masks”. “Oh, it such a shame people crowd outdoors without masks spreading virus and contributing to the death toll”.

But what can be done? Our country is so poor. We have no enough budget. We cannot produce masks. It is too hard for our industry. We cannot produce ventilators. We cannot produce virus test kits. We cannot produce hand gel. Our police is unable to dispense crowds. Out policemen don't have masks, equipment, cars. There are actually no policemen on the streets at all!

We could not close airports. Our airport workers don’t know how to do this. We could not deprive our citizens of the joy of going to ski in Italy and bringing the infection back with them, and we could not isolate them when they landed back in Heathrow/Gatwick. There are no isolation rooms there :( Such a shame!

So what can be done? Just nothing. It’s our fate. Let’s just choose whom to disconnect from the ventilator. And let's keep strolling outside - such a good weather! Perhaps some more elderly will get infected and die because we stroll outside, but come on! those elderly would have died anyway, right?

And let’s prepare to lose our relatives and friends. And don’t forget to say “sorry” on every occasion and in every direction, and clap to our brilliant government and the healthcare system.

OP posts:
GoldenOmber · 21/04/2020 13:20

Were the children told 'killing one person is the correct answer', or were they given it as a moral philosophy thought experiment? There's quite a difference.

GuyFawkesDay · 21/04/2020 13:22

Sounds like a philosophy lesson.

Utilitarianism Vs other philosophical ideas.

PotteringAlong · 21/04/2020 13:22

It’s like the fat man dilemma. It’s a philosophical and ethical argument to be had.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/books/review/would-you-kill-the-fat-man-and-the-trolley-problem.amp.html

AmelieTaylor · 21/04/2020 13:23

Bullshit your kids got asked this by a teacher

PotteringAlong · 21/04/2020 13:25

amelie they might; I’ve posed similar questions to my a-level ethics classes.

sashh · 21/04/2020 13:26

It's a version of the 'the trolly problem', it's very well known, it's been around since the mid 1980s at least.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

SunnySomer · 21/04/2020 13:27

My son has done almost the identical question in Personal Development (PSHE). The whole point was to prompt discussion. It seems odd and ill-thought out to get the students to do this online and at this point in time though.

Gzornpla · 21/04/2020 13:29

OP, I think you need to step away from the gin. This is not the part of Mumsnet for an unhinged rant about the current situation - it’s an education forum.

Personally, I call bullish*t on your DD’s “problem to solve”. At most, it’s a scenario to stimulate a debate on medical ethics and moral philosophy which, depending on the age of your DD, seems perfectly legitimate to me. Too extrapolate from this to a question of a totally different nature from a movie and then to a verbal projectile vomiting about the UK response to COVID-19 is, frankly, ludicrous.

Gzornpla · 21/04/2020 13:31

Of course, I meant ‘to’ and not ‘too’!

PorpentiaScamander · 21/04/2020 13:36

We often had topics along those lines to discuss and debate.
One was about who should get the limited lifeboat spaces on a sinking ship.
There were no right or wrong answers but we had to back up our argument with more than "just because"

Tootletum · 21/04/2020 13:39

Standard philosophy question. As to the rest of your post, absolutely no idea!

KrakowDawn · 21/04/2020 13:44

I think you need to go back to school and learn what fascism is.

HandfulOfDust · 21/04/2020 13:46

Pretty much this OP, I think you need to step away from the gin. This is not the part of Mumsnet for an unhinged rant about the current situation - it’s an education forum.

andlondon · 21/04/2020 13:48

Exactly guys! Same was in the movie “Life Is Beautiful” 1997 which unfortunately none of the responded here has seen :(

Many people were sitting at the table and a woman who was a head teacher of some school said that pupils of the age of 10 were given the following problem:

'The percent of the mentally ill in the country is 7%, keeping a person in hospital costs X money daily, the country population is Y, how much would the country save if got rid of all mentally ill'?

And the main character said: ' Wow! Horrible problem, how can they give this to children?!'

But someone else said, 'Wait, it's a simple math, you need to divide X by the percentage of the ill and multiply by the population of the country... We solved such problems when I was 9!'

I am now feeling here like I am in that movie...

OP posts:
andlondon · 21/04/2020 13:49

HandfulOfDust: This is exactly THE question of education! What kind of generation are we going to grow if we educate them with such problems in such situation?

OP posts:
GoldenOmber · 21/04/2020 13:50

I promise you OP it’s a really standard philosophy/ethics thought experiment. The point is not to encourage children to kill people for their organs, it’s to look at and talk about the thinking behind their moral decisions.

merryhouse · 21/04/2020 13:51

Yeah, sounds like a discussion starter to me. How old is your daughter?

It was possibly a Bad Idea to throw this particular one out at this particular time...

If your daughter's teachers were All About The Fascism then they'd be telling her that the fourth person should be happy to die now to further the Glorious Greater Good. It's far more likely that one or two of the kids will hypothesise that and be shouted down by the others.

(I hate these questions. They're always ridiculously unrealistic.)

YoureAllABunchOfBastards · 21/04/2020 13:51

You're presuming that they are going to suggest killing off the guy with the terminal illness. In my experience with that kind of question, they are not. It's a moral/ethical dilemma.

How did you discuss it with your DD? Or did you just go batshit?

andlondon · 21/04/2020 13:56

Dear sir/madam YoureAllABunchOfBastards!

Instead of teaching children with such ethical dilemmas and ESPECIALLY in the today's time, the following needs to be taught:

Life should be saved at all cost. Equipment should be provided to the hospitals at all cost. By teaching these moral dilemmas you excuse the government who decided to do nothing to prevent the deaths.

And you teach the children that death is unavoidable. You just need to decide who will die. Instead of teaching that death can be avoided with effort and diligence.

OP posts:
RoseAndRose · 21/04/2020 13:57

Did any of the pupils ask awkward questions about tissue matching?

Or as required drugs cannot be procured, whether even a successful transplant in technical terms would actually save anyone?

greathat · 21/04/2020 13:58

It's not telling them anything is right it wrong, it's asking them to THINK for themselves. Possibly something we are lacking in society is people who do think and consider things from different angles, rather than just blindly believe what the right or left wing media of their choice tell them

andlondon · 21/04/2020 13:58

merryhouse, sorry, just yesterday there was a large news article on the BBC, all dedicated to a lady in a hospital whose work is deciding whom to disconnect from the ventilator. So yes, this problem is teaching that killing the fourth is the choice, because it saves more life.

OP posts:
pinkblanchmange · 21/04/2020 13:58

Totally standard ethics question, we do similar - the Trolley problem, or who would you save from a burning building.

PlanDeRaccordement · 21/04/2020 13:59

OP you are figuratively lost.
No discussing a medical ethics scenario in school is not fascism akin to 1933 Germany.

And you are trotting out falsehoods regarding what the U.K. Government did and did not do regarding COVID

PatriciaHolm · 21/04/2020 13:59

The lesson in LiS is a very different problem to the one you are referencing and posed very different. The one you talk about from the film is specifically posed as "saving money is a good thing; so killing those who cost us money is a good thing; so lets work out how much we can save!" The "killing people is a good thing" is assumed, not up for discussion.

The question from school is, as others have stated, different and a pretty well known ethics/philosophy discussion point. It leaves it up to the debators to discuss the relative merits of the various actions.

And I think you need read up on Japan. They haven't even remotely stopped it.

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