Questionable judgments

• London's Daily Mail reported in April that the Mab Lane Primary school in Liverpool was boldly dealing with the problem of unruly students by scheduling 20-minute massage sessions twice a week in a room with aromatic oils and soothing music. Children of all ages at the school are taught "simple shoulder and back massages on each other," the newspaper reported.

• School authorities in Mount Vernon, Ohio, began an investigation in April after complaints that eighth-grade science teacher John Freshwater was injecting his religious beliefs a little too much into the class. In one "experiment," Freshwater allegedly tossed Lego pieces into a pile and asked students if the pieces could assemble themselves (or would a "creator" have to do it), but the accusation that most aroused parental anger was a demonstration of electrostatic electricity, in which he asked for volunteers to take a shock on the arm, which resulted in a distinct "cross" being burned onto the skin.

• In April, two of the nine Baltimore-area middle-school kids implicated in a potentially fatal beating of a young couple on a transit bus last year said they would soon file lawsuits asking for $10 million each from their school (for suspending them) and the transit company (for barring them from future rides, which it did out of concern for the safety of its passengers).