MANCHESTER, N.H. (MyFoxBoston.com) –An anti-bullying exercise held at a school in Manchester, N.H. has angered a set of parents so much that they pulled their children from the school.
Keith Katsikis said he and his wife have decided that their three children who attended the Hallsville School will no longer be students there. Katsikis says students had to take part in an anti-bullying exercise that required them to swear in class and he doesn't agree with that.
Katsikis said his son told him about the exercise on bullying. Apparently, the teacher in charge of the exercise taped a giant paper man on the wall and asked students to write inappropriate things on small pieces of paper. What they chose to write had to be something someone else had said to them prior to the exercise. She then took the papers and had students real them out loud.
"They're shouting obscenities out loud, including very vulgar swear words and phrases," Katsikis told FOX25 in a phone interview. "And then violently ripping apart a symbolic cutout of a man."
The moral of the exercise, reportedly, was that people cannot be put back together after you curse at them or insult them.
Katsikis' son said even when kids said they didn't want to, they were forced to participate.
FOX25 left a message for the school principal, but did not hear back as of Sunday morning.
The father started an online petition to fire the school's principal and sent copies of a letter to the superintendent, school board members and city officials.
School officials do plan to meet with Katsikis on Monday morning.
"I think parents should have the right to choose, whether they think it's a great lesson or a bad lesson, and whether their kids should be exposed to it or not," Katsikis said.