A high school teacher in Sweden has been suspended after setting students an assignment in which they would plan in detail a theoretical terror attack.
Pupils at a high school in Jönköping were asked to imagine they were a terrorist planning an attack using a chemical or biological agent. Their mission was to kill as many innocent civilians as possible.
The assignment encouraged the students to plan the attack meticulously, including which agent they would use, how they would release it, which location they would choose for maximum casualties, and what time of day would be optimal for the attack to take place.
The task was set during an English lesson on Friday during which several students expressed their discomfort at carrying out the assignment and told the school of their concerns.
The education authority responsible for the management of the school described the lesson as both inappropriate and insensitive and suspended the teacher without pay pending an investigation.
“It was a teacher who had handed out a task where the students would theoretically describe a terrorist attack. That’s how a number of students perceived it,” said Henrik Natt och Dag, head of education for the Jönköping municipality.
“It consisted of them making a political statement by planning a terrorist attack. And then there were details about how the task would be done,” he continued.
He added that the decision to set the task during a time “with an elevated terrorist threat level” was “extremely reckless.”
The incident was reported to the police, which dropped the case shortly after insisting that no criminal offense had been committed.
The teacher in question has objected to his suspension and insisted that the reasoning for the assignment has been distorted. As cited by the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, he claimed the task was not a glorification of terror but an assignment highlighting how inappropriate such acts were.
He added that the task had been used several times previously both at the school and as part of the curriculum in Australia.
