Risk Management

Or: Juggling Chain Saws on the Playground

What to do when you have to teach young people knowledge, skills, procedures that relate to the participation with or manipulation of dangerous materials or processes? From crossing the street on a second grade field trip to the market, to the athletic fields, to the art and science labs, there is risk of injury in every aspect of education, but the public, policy and law makers and the chattering classes take for granted that all that exists within the context of education should be without risk of harm to students.

There is a train of thought among some in education that all risk, all danger, all variables related to harm can be eliminated during school hours. Look at all we do to make our schools safe; from metal detectors, searches, backpack and locker regulations, to what foods we serve in the cafeteria that may on the off-chance expose that one student to a possibly damaging food product; then there's the asbestos/chemical substance/tobacco/sugar/fat lobby seeking to eliminate all harm from the hours young people spend at school by straining out every possibility of potential injury.

But what happens when, in the process of teaching how to create an outstanding outcome by means of using inherently difficult materials or during the learning of complex skills, some weird variable pops up and the worst of scenarios occurs?

Take the case of the young girl killed while participating in a Junior Lifeguard training activity off the coast of Huntington Beach, California.* The boating procedure that caused her death is done hundreds of times by instructors and trainers throughout the country, but this one time a freak variable occurred and the young girl is no longer with us.

What to do? Cancel the program? Eliminate this portion of student training? Add more training to the instructors and pilots? Learn the procedure only on days of glassy calm? In this case, the program has been in operation for forty five years. The pilot, highly experienced, has devoted himself to this for twenty years.

The chemistry lab is one example of a place at school where students can get interested in a professional career in medicine or science or engineering, but the nature of the lab, and the materials being worked with entail risk. Even something as innocuous as baking soda and vinegar, if mishandled, will produce an explosion with flying pieces that will cut, or injure an eye (even while wearing safety glasses).

Sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, magnesium, iron oxide, aluminum, even common materials like bleach and ammonia must be handled safely, but sometimes mistakes happen, lapses in attention or judgement occur, and there is an accident. Is this cause to eliminate these types of instruction? The alternatives to learning in context with the materials themselves leads to far less understanding, with inferior preparation for later learning. There is only so much you can learn from the interactive textbook on the Cloud, or the wall poster of the periodic table, or from Youtube and the History Channel.

In my classroom we learn about the practical application of math and science as it relates to the engineering disciplines, and to do that, we use processes and machines to mold, shape, cut, sand, melt, twist, bore the materials under study to obtain real-world experience with the science and math principles and theory, and gain expertise and mastery with the materials themselves. 

For instance, in order to understand and learn the relationship between the terms clearance, tolerance, and fit, engineering terms having a direct bearing on Newton's laws of motion, students build mechanisms with moving parts that must fit inside one another with little friction, (wheels and axles) or force the movement of air (aerodynamic theory by building model rockets) in such a way as to learn how Newton's laws are in action with the common materials and technologies we use every day. Is radiation a wave or a particle? Theory can be elegant and sometimes cute, but working with the thing itself (electricity) makes the learning real and immediate and captivating.

It's not unusual to get a cut or scrape or a pounded finger or thumb or a low amperage shock. Safety is stressed constantly throughout the process, practiced by the students and the instructor, and a great deal of time is spent learning procedures and methods to stay safe around hand and machine tools.

But supervision only goes so far. It's a line young people must step across that sometimes twitches back on itself.

When you hand your kid the keys to the car, you do so with an element of trust based on confidence you have built, founded in turn on your personal judgement of your kid's skill level which is in turn based on the repeated observation that she/he has their own refined judgement to perform safely with this dangerous tool (for the auto, like it or not, is a dangerous tool). We give it little thought, but the young person with the car keys has the entree to immolate him/herself and a carload of other young people. Then there's the math angle; new drivers are inherently prone to damaging themselves and others (statistically speaking).

In education of any sort, there is the element of trust and confidence that must be granted or instilled in young people in order for them to have a sense of confidence and competence in their own skill or set of skills; when faced with a complex task or set of tasks that taxes the intellect or the ability to manipulate materials to obtain a preset or directed outcome, confidence in oneself based on empirical experience leads to success more often than not. 

Once the instructor, teacher, or parent is confident that the young person has mastered a skill, the young person must operate it independently to demonstrate to her/himself that "yes, I can do it!." The joy, relief, sometimes intoxication with newly learned abilities and the revelation of new competencies can spark a life-long love of learning in sometimes otherwise jaundiced pupils.

The alternative is to watch the teacher do all the work with risky/dangerous materials, many times a pointless observational exercise with no hands-on participation on the part of the student. (why do so many kids check their head out of the learning process? Ask them-- their perception is that school is boring and has little relevance to their lives)

In the situation with the Junior Lifeguards, hearing a lecture or watching video on what to do when you find yourself overboard in the sea just doesn't compare or have the same effect as the visceral and affective impact of actually practicing in deep salt water, even under controlled conditions.

But what about that one student you can never turn your back on for fear he/she will intentionally/maliciously do something really stupid/vicious? The playground and the common areas of schools (and classrooms as well) cannot be watched everywhere and at all times. Would we as a society permit such surveillance, or fund the educational establishment in such a way as to put adult eyes everywhere? And then the meme of "who will watch the watchers?" **

Students having the confidence built on experience with bullies or just plain randomly dangerous people have to speak up for themselves or have the confidence to speak up to us, and we have to protect them without being second-guessed by others who would do violence to us via the legal system.

When things go bad, it's the teachers and administrators who've put their pink bodies and livelihoods on the line so that young people will be educated, that get hammered, and from every angle. The legal angle notwithstanding, how do you cope inside your own head when you've done everything right, followed the procedures, done due diligence, and it still goes down flaming? It's wonderment that anyone at all still volunteers to teach school in our current dispensation of teaching and learning. 

What's the payoff when there are so many pressures to keep all the chain saws juggled? It's definitely not the money. It's when that one or two mediocre students come back several years later and tell you and show you what they’ve achieved because of the trust you have granted and the confidence you have instilled.

* Parsons, Dana, Death devastates Junior Lifeguards, Los Angeles Times, 6/16/09, p.A3

** wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%3F