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Fast Forward

Israel School Red-Faced After Teachers’ Unvarnished Opinions of Students Go Public

Students at an Israeli high school were in an uproar on Monday after a teacher mistakenly sent them an internal email that spelled out what faculty members really thought about them.

“Not too bright”, “Liar”, “Tactless”, “Big Baby”, “Anti-social”, “Has a thing for boys” and “Sick-o” were some of the descriptions on an Excel spreadsheet that landed in students’ email boxes.

Protesting outside the Yitzhak Rabin High School in Kfar Saba, a town north of Tel Aviv, students pinned some of those descriptions on their shirts and demanded an apology, which its principal made.

“We will draw conclusions about our behaviour and the way we express ourselves,” the principal, Ruth Lazar, was quoted as saying by the YNet news site.

The list, which also contained praise for a number of students, was compiled by teachers as a guide to potential misbehaviour by the teens due to take part in a school visit to Holocaust sites in Poland, a trip that has become a rite of passage for many Israeli youngsters.

One of the teachers inadvertently copied the list to students who signed up for the trip, the school said.

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