Answer: horrifying

Please read this powerful article. A teacher not only taught her elementary school class to sing this song, she was apparently so proud of it that she created a U-tube video.

Can you imagine what it must be like for the fat children listening to this concert or for those in the class? Has the war on childhood obesity reached the point where role modeling taunts are seen as acceptable teaching moments? A series of posts at JFS looked at the harm and hurt from the harrassment fat children experience in school, and readers were urged to read their painful stories growing up.

As today’s writer said:

[I]f you’re tempted to see children teasing about weight, or a music teacher implicitly encouraging it as adorable and funny, the web site I Was a Fat Kid...This is my Story should be a cold splash of water on the face....what’s also clear from reading these stories is that for many of these kids, the victimization they endure in school leads to profound trauma and scarring. Suicide attempts, eating disorders, rage and depression come up a lot...

Most of the perpetrators of course are just children, but one of the pervasive themes in these stories is how so many of these kids felt that the adults around them (particularly teachers) were either willfully ignorant of or complicit in the abuse, with some either subtly or overtly encouraging it.

Or that’s how the children saw it anyway. It’s impossible to know, really, from a child’s eye view what was going on in the minds of the adults around them. Was the teacher who weighed all the students in front of each other ignorant of the effect this would have on the fat children? Or just didn’t think it was very important? Or just didn’t think.

I guess I have the same question about teachers who would teach children this song. It’s only funny if you don’t think.

The entire article and personal comments are valuable reading and remind us all … to think.