Teacher makes students decide who lives, who dies

Reported by Fox News on 2013-10-10

A classroom of 14 and 15-year-old Illinois high school students was assigned the task of deciding the fate of ten fictional characters in an exercise that critics called a lesson in death panels…. The lesson involves 10 people who are in desperate need of kidney dialysis…. But there’s a problem. The local hospital only has enough machines to support six patients.

There was a time in America when the obvious answer to such a “dilemma” was to harness the power of capitalism and build more dialysis machines. In a Socialist world, however, the reality is shortages of just about everything, and, ultimately, yes, death panels. But, putting aside that stark eventuality, I can’t help but wonder why we can’t just focus on teaching kids, the four R’s: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and RESPECT — especially respect for human life and liberty.