FrenchBoy

Teachers are now being urged not to take kids on school trips incase they open themselves up to lawsuits in the event of the kiddies hurting themselves.

[ramble on]
Made me think about my school trips abroad when we used to go to austria in the summer -

...fifty 13yr old schoolchildren dropped off in Innsbruck for the night and told to meet up by the bus 3 hours later at 11pm. we were allowed to wander off on our own with no teacher supervision.

needless to say most of us ran off to the nearest bar and got hideously drunk. we then all stumbled back onto the bus and the teacher just counted us all back on and then off we went back to the hotel!

can you imagine that happening these days!!!?? a bunch of 13yr olds allowed to wander around a foreign city - drunk - with no one watching over them!!!

its just a shame that the people who have the unfortunate responsibility of looking after our children are so paranoid about stepping out of line with our nanny state that they cant do their jobs properly, and it seems like no one is allowed to have any fun anymore!!



[ramble off/]

Brendan Hughes

Look at the scouting post I put up this morning...

Poor Guy

aye, certain experiments are now illegal due to safety. now have to use rubbish lasers. not expansion of gas demo's. no choking gas demos.

Markus

It is a sad state of affairs. I think we're lucky in that we were probably the last generation to have a 'proper' education, with slightly dangerous experiments in science and physics lessons, and field trips where we might get hurt.

I remember experiments with gunpowder at school, lots of fun. plus metalwork was a lot of fun, being threatened with a blowtorch when we messed around, now that was funny

I can understand why the schools have to do it though. i think one of the cases was where a parent was helping on a trip and she had brought her son along and he'd drowned and she was suing the school for negligence. OK, tragic accident, but a few points here (my facts could be wrong, so will eat my words if I have to) 1) the kid in question was not part of the group, he was along with his mother who was a helper, so he should not have been there anyway, 2) should the mother have not been keeping an eye on her child as well, if any is at fault then she shold be as well, she was helping out.

Not belittling the loss of life at all, just saying that accidents do, unfortunately happen, and in the litigious world we no live in people will sue to sort things out, and that is sad.

LG John

Character building if you ask me What so many things being banned for school children what is left for them to experience - what interesting/funny/crazy stuff will they have to tell their children?? Even just in the generation between my old man and myself you can see the difference - some of the things he used to get up to is just crazy. He was from the generation where after school everyone would meet up at the park for industrial games of football or other mischief. I was from the generation where we used to meet up in a small group and see who can do the first level of Sonic the Hedgehog the quickest (me btw )

LG John

Ah, 'experiments' I recall a lad in our science class directly wired a 3v light bulb into the mains and turned it on Took out the fuses for half a block and the lightbulb exploded gloriously! So, someone gets glass in their hair and another nearly gets electrocuted - as I said, character building

Poor Guy

hehe. we had a right retard of a tech teacher. used to melt all the solder into one big blob. he got right pissed off. the best thing though was when the above happened.

David Lock

Ah memories. **** in the fume cupboard, that really strong acid that dissolved anything - just a drop or two on someone's jacket or text book, phenol thalyn (spelling? sorry years ago) in teacher's coffee (gave you the runs) and connecting the bunsen burners to the high pressure water system. Coppers in the silver nitrite to make them look silver and pass them of as half crowns.....

what would scooby do

I remember a school trip to the Rhine Valley where we took great pleasure insulting the locals in English 'cos they didn't understand... lasted about one hour as we went to a tourist tack shop and proclaimed that all the goods where ****e..

Sausage muncher behind the counter punched one of the pupils across the shop floor and laughed - yes but you cvnts buy it all ...

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

My cosuin got drenched in acid during an experiment that went wrong !

Jerome

At 12-13 I went on an adventure training trip to Scotland. We did canoeing in Loch Nevis (which is pretty deep IIRC), mountain walking, abseiling etc. Those of us that could already canoe were allowed to paddle off on our own.

At 14 I went on a school camping trip to Paris. A whole bunch of 14 years olds allowed to wander round Paris unsupervised.

Seems a shame that these kind of adventures are denied today's youth.

Edited to add: My Chemistry classes were a hoot. Setting alight the gas coming from the tap for bunsen burners. A nice 3 foot long flame from that. With the bunsens we used to heat up peoples pens/pencil case zips/tongs etc. Great fun seeing people get burnt. In physics we used to wire up big capacitors the wrong way. Made a great bang. In PE we let off bangers in the squash courts when being used by the public As SB said, character building.

lmsbman

Anyone remember that nice friendly game of British Bulldog in the Gymnasium. The only rule was, there were no rules. Now that was character building!!

we used to chuck iron filings at the bunsen burner. Mad teacher caught us, said you *****, went into the prep room and came out with a jar of sulphur powder and lobbed a handful of it at the bunsen burner. The flame shot up and burnt a bloody big patch on the ceiling!

Same teacher decided to teach us fractional distillation with a difference. Brought in some of his homemade potato wine and basically turned it into vodka. We all had a glass, god it was strong!!

Nicci

I went on a school trip back in '88, which went wrong and a few adults and kids died.

Nobody blamed the school for taking us on the trip, which I still think was correct.

People should accept that there is always a risk of things going wrong.
Parents do not have to send their children on trips.

But being a kid and having some freedom is great, just remember to wrap them in cotton wool first.

brickboy

The problem isn't the schools -- it's the rash of modern parents who are quite happy to abdicate responsibility when it suits them, but rush to law when it doesn't.

As a father of two I see this attitude all the time at schools and in out-of-school activities and sometimes the two-facedness is breathtaking.