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The Grand Theft Auto Manual

If you are the lucky parent of a child attending one of the Merseyside primary schools, then you probably should pay a visit to the place where your child is spending most of his/her day. No, the kid did nothing wrong, but we kinda believe their teachers did...

These days, a very interesting pilot program is being ran in several schools in the region. Backed by £15,000 grant from the government, the schools and several charities have set up the so called "Get Real" program: a teaching scheme which uses images taken from the Grand Theft Auto video game and several violent cartoons like Itchy and Scratchy, to teach children about the effects of violence in real life.

Now, the reasoning behind the whole thing is this: show the kids violent images and they'll stop becoming desensitized by violence. Hookers, crooks, shotguns being fired, axes, chainsaws, bloody baseball bats, these are only a few of the things show to the children.

The students are than asked to decide whether the images they've seen are to be rated as "good real life", "bad real life" or "not real."

"They think it's normal life. We're telling them this is not real, this does not go on and it should not go on," Gaynor Bell, from the charity Support After Murder and Manslaughter was quoted as saying by digitalspy.co.uk.

One, however, may see things a little different. While the program itself may indeed do a good job at defining the "good," "bad," and "real" concepts, it's rather likely the images shown in class will increase the appetite children have for video games.

Remember Columbine?
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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