Tell little kids the truth about Santa Claus and get fired for it. About 25 students were driven to tears when a substitute teacher told them the Santa Claus story is a lie. The kids had become rowdy and excited during class talking about Christmas and Santa Claus.
To get the students’ attention, the teacher then used a questionable classroom discipline tactic by interrupting the banter, saying, “It’s your parents who leave out presents on Christmas Day.” Everyone paid attention at that point. The kids were said to be have been seriously traumatized upon hearing her words. They tearfully recounted the incident to their parents after school that day.
The head teacher sent out apology notices to all the families involved. The substitute teacher has been terminated from ever working at that school again. Is the substitute teacher right in debunking a seasonal lie? Or is she a black-hearted kill joy who has no business being around children?
The follow up comments to this story are interesting. Some of the highest rated, and lowest rated comments give some insight into how the whole ethical and emotional ordeal can be framed. Here are a couple of examples from the UK Mail Online story :
Someone who is prepared to burst the Christmas bubble for excited seven-year-olds is, in my view, probably not cut out for working with small children.
So ,was she not telling the truth ? Can’t see any problem with that.
I still remember my disgust as a 9 year old when I found out my parents had been lying to me for years about ‘Father Xmas’. We shouldn’t be telling children these concocted fairy tales; I certainly never trusted my parents again about *anything*.
Full marks to the teacher who, just for once, told the truth.
Santa may not exist — but clearly the Wicked Witch does!
Sounds like a phony story to me without date, name of school, name of principal, etc. In any case, not to worry. Qualified substitute teachers are hard to get. Nobody got hurt here.
Donno, SAHS Teacher – there sure are a lot of UK sources that give more details:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=UK+substitute+teacher+no+santa+claus
I am guessing that this substitute doesn’t have any children of that age, because she’d know better about the controversy of other parents trying to mitigate the lie or propogate the lie of Santa Claus with their children.
Usually it is an older friend or cousin who blows the SC story to the younger kids.
I was a special kind of naive as a kid. I realized it was impossible that this old guy with flying reindeer from centuries ago was still around giving presents to billions of kids in one night, but I figured it was some kind of organization that he had started hundreds of years ago. For one thing I didn’t think that it was possible that my parents would be TOTALLY lying about something.
What kind of over-thinking naive is that called?
There must be a Santa Claus because he came to San Pedro yesterday and he gave a bunch of coal to Bob as a going away present!
http://www.pontevista.blogspot.com http://www.dailybreeze.com
Now all we have to do is get Bob out of Santa Ana and he’ll be able to head back up to Berkeley without anything left in SoCal to deal with.
One truth about Santa Claus is that the song “Jingle Bells” was never meant for him and it should not be considered when one considers Mr. Claus and his trip around the World one night a year.
Everybody know a turkey and that reindeer do not have bobbed tails, with or without bells.
Vern,
I think that’s pretty sweet over-naive thinking and typical for your scary-smart brain!
I also think it’s funny how many kids know Santa’s “in your heart” and keep the cute farce going ’cause they’re worried it’ll ruin their parents’ fun if mom or dad find out that they actually know! (At least that’s why I did … and I think my second-youngest nephew is doing the same thing …)
Oh, and I left out. Other kids laughed at me for thinking such nonsense. I hope this does not reflect badly on my current political thought…
This story made http://detentionslip.org ! Check it out for all the crazy stories from our schools.
M Richards,
Congratulations and Merry Chirstmas presents early to you and your team! Thanks for sharing the links. Looks like you are one Bisno shorter today than you were just a week ago.
I agree with Laura Longboobs regarding Vern. You’ve got that very sweetly cute factor going on. And apparently its been with you all your life.
Hall monitor,
Thanks for stopping by with your own links. Very funny site. There was a similar site to yours…
http://teachertrash.blogspot.com/
Nice job with the UK sub teacher story.
One Christmas, my oldest decided to do some investigating to see if Santa was “real”. She was old enough to know that he wasn’t and she made mention of our dodgy efforts to talk about the “spirit” of Christmas. Well, she finally said she was fairly certain that we were making up the Santa story and she was going to inform the younger ones. We warned her… I don’t think that’s a good idea to spoil their fun at Christmas.. etc.. You better be careful with talk like that so close to Christmas…. etc..
Well, she did tell them and we kind of pooh-poohed it…. saying… well, let’s see if Santa eats the cookes and if his reindeers eat the carrots. We’ll know soon enough.
The next morning they all came running down the stairs as early as every other Christmas morning. The younger ones were happy and laughing when they brought their stockings up to our room to show us what Santa had brought. Bringing up the rear was our oldest one sobbing, with nothing but a couple of lumps of coal in her big sock.
Man, I thought you said you were sure there was no Santa. Bummer.
😉