New York, Jun 8 (IANS): The mother of a five-year-old girl in the US shared a picture of a rhyme that teaches toddlers how to prepare for a mass shooting, that has gone viral with people expressing outrage, media reported.
Georgy Cohen shared the picture of the rhyme on Twitter. Within 24 hoursthere were over 18,000 retweets.
The "Lockdown" poem is intended to be sung to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" but there's nothing cute or innocent about it, the Boston Globe reported.
The limericks say: "Lockdown, Lockdown, Lock the Door./ Shut the lights off say no more./ Go behind the desk and hide./ Wait until it's safe inside./ Lockdown, lockdown its all done./ Now its time to have some fun", teaching children how to prepare for a mass shooting
Cohen, whose daughter might attend the school, said: "This should not be hanging in my soon-to-be kindergartner's classroom."
"It's jarring," Cohen, a Massachusetts resident, told The Boston Globe on Thursday. However, she also made it clear that she was not "angry" at the school.
Instead, she was happy the school was taking necessary steps. As she said: "These are the things they unfortunately have to do. I get it." But said it was hard for her to imagine children singing it in such a playful way.
Not everyone,however, agrees, and her post is sparking heated conversations online about the appropriate way to prepare young children for the worst.
Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone and Superintendent Mary Skipper released a joint statement to the Globe and said: "This is, unfortunately, the world we live in today.
"Just like school fire drills, lockdown drills have sadly become a common practice in schools, and educators do everything they can to reduce students' anxiety and stress."
There are over 2,000 comments on Cohen's original tweet. She was happy it was eliciting such a reaction by people because "it's important not to normalise school shootings", Cohen said.
"To be shocked by it is important. To see that absurdity and horror and have that sick feeling in your stomach is important," she said. "Stay outraged... I think that that's important," she added.
US in the past few months have witnessed major school massacres, including the February 14 shootout at a high school in Florida that killed 17 people prompting widespread calls to reform gun laws.