Why teachers need more training

I've been often told that you should never believe everything that you read, especially on the internet. I hope that this article is exactly one of those times when the material must be untrue, because it is pretty unbelievable.

Let me summerize it for you. A weird little five year old boy (possibly autistic) was "voted out" of his class by his five year old classmates. The teacher, by organizing this tribal council, suggested that this was an appropriate method of dealing with a problem child. It's not clear how much of a PROBLEM this problem child truly posed, but that's quite beside the point. I'm less concerned with the psychological well-being of the child being voted out (though I suspect it is pretty horrible and that this might be the kind of trauma that might lead to severe problems a bit later on in life) but I think the lesson that all of the other children in the class learned that day was an unspeakably foul one.

Knowing what we know about the psychology of mob rule and conformity in the presence of authority I can't imagine in what universe a teacher would consider this situation an example of a positive education. Maybe she was attempting to teach them a lesson about democracy, though a terribly misguided one. Or maybe she was just fed up with having to deal with a socially awkward little boy.

Let's hope none of this is true. Or at the very least, let's hope this is as bad as it gets in the educational system...