Thread: NSW parents your kids need help

I agree that it is a loss to education if these items are banned from schools, however I suspect that the reason is the current sue-the-b...s culture, which is making the cost of insurance impossible, and the OH&S issues a complete nightmare.

Maybe there is room for a campaign for some sense to be brought into the laws relating to responsibility, and maybe even make people take some responsibility for their own actions rather than sue someone else.

As a self employed engineer I am fast being put out of business by the cost of insurance, and many others are in the same boat.

However, I must get off my soapbox before someone falls over it and sues me.

Grue

I think the list you posted is far to short the following tools should be added

hand saws ( if you try really hard I recon you could cut ya arm off with one of them)

hammers
hand planes
folding rulers ( they can give you nasty pinch if you open them the wrong way)

chisels
pencils (them things will have your eye out if your not carefull)
rulers
rubbers ( a teacher threw one at me once, it hurt like hell)

pencil sharpeners (that will stop the pencils from being so dangerous)

In fact I think we should dress our children in full body armour and have the class rooms turned into padded cells. that way they won't learn any thing usefull, will grow up to be completly incompetent idiots and have to become insurance sales people which by then will be the only growth industry.

But seriously I think the "sue the bastards" culture we are becoming is terrible, industrial accidents happen for a reason, they're part of the natural selection process ie they're natures way of removing idiots from our society.

Its all because of the Workcover rules about unguarded machinery etc etc
The local woodcraft group I belong to meets in the local High school Manual arts room,boy some of the work these guys are turning out is fabulous.
The detail in the work is fantastic,we had a demo day up there on the weekend and their major works were out on display,there was an entertainment unit I have followed being built month by month and the finished product is fantastic, outmatches any store built thing but is twice the quality if I were the guy that built it I would put a price tag of at least $5000 on it.built by a fourteen year old.
Scroll saw work that one of our guys who consistently wins first prizes for his work,says ran rings around his, done by a thirteen year old girl who is going on to uni to do industrial design.
Gave all us older guys great heart to see that the next generation is not letting traditional craftmanship die.

Great posting coastie,

Gee its great to read that some communities work with their local schools. I wish more people were given the opportunity to see the work kids do at school and take such an interest in it.

Those of you who went to the Sydney Wood show in June may have seen some of the student's work on display. Fantastic stuff.

The point I was making is that these restrictions about to be placed on us are going to severely limit teachers capacity to teach the skills kids need to be competative in the job market.

At the end of last year, I had an 18 year old student that held a miniature brass steam engine in his hand, and lovingly looking at it said "gee I'm proud of this". He'd obviously never ever said that about anything he'd ever made before, and you all know the feeling. He's now got something better to do than ripping off your car.

It's not about safety, its about the fear of getting sued. They don't ban sports because kids get hurt, and there's a lot more hurt (and Killed) in sport, than there is in the IA workshop. Its also about money! They don't want to buy new machines.

If you had a shop with $300.000 worth of machines you'd put away $30,000 a year to replace them. The Department's budget = $0.

About time the politicians got their priorities right!

Grue.

This is the sort of thinking that breeds useless, litigious idiots that think that the world "owes" them. Obviously when you take away all possible threats to safety, then you are not teaching kids how to assess the safety of any operation or situation and how to respond to safety issues. Message: "You are precious and must be wrapped in cotton wool and not exposed to any potentially dangerous situation, the world owes it to you to be totally safe and non-threatening, if anything happens to you it's not your fault, you aren't required to take any responsibility for your safety."
Grue, I don't know how you can cope working in such a large bureaucratic juggernaut which can come up with such policies. I started a Bachelor of Vocational Education a while back as I would love to pass on the skills that I have acquired over the years, but after my second teaching prac. I realised I could not work as part of a huge, cumbersome and frankly stupid bureaucracy.

Mick

Couldn't agree more Mick, I live in QLD and as yet we haven't gone down this road but it may come. It makes me more determined to acquire quality gear and develop skills that I can pass on to my kids.

What is NSW going to do about filling apprenticeship positions in years to come? They may have to import kids from states that are not so short sighted. There are enough kids coming out of our High school and University systems, full of PC crap and ill equiped for the real world as it is.

Ok getting off my soap box now.

Geez the only electrical machine we had at highschool was a lathe......& I didn't turn out too bad in the skills department. Although funnily enough - well those that know me know I own a symtec.. Mwahahahha....

You've got to love the way julianx put it.

"Accidents are natures way of removing idiots from our society."

That one got a good giggle.

Wood dust is dangerous so why not ban wood from the woodwork course?

The students could watch videos and use a woodwork simulator on a PC to gain their skills.

Coastie, good to hear about the younger people doing the woodwork. Do you meet at a High School in Nowra?

- Wood Borer

I'm afraid it's a sign of the times we are living in, I don't think that it's just bureaucracy. The good old U.S.of A. with all of it's litergating lawers have changed most of this and it' has come here too.

My wife, a teacher, just afew days ago had a run in with a parent after a child had an accident on some play equipment. The equipment has been inspected regularly with OHP and safty but the parent "fell out of her tree" ranting and raving about the potential danger children were subjected by playing on it. It was just an accident where the child slipped and fell (from not too great a height - .5 meter).

She was considering removing the equipment, thus denieghing many other children the pleasure of using it. She had OHP come again to inspect the equipment and again they passed it as being safe. She could very easily have opted to remove the "offending equipment" to ensure that she didn't have to face a unreasonable parent verbally abusing her ever again but she opted to leave the equipment in place as she could see that the positve benefits for the children would ffar outweight any negatives - one child hurting themselves every 10 years. This shows that in these cases much of the pressure to "sanitise" the enviroment at schools comes from parents and it's not necessarily just a bureaucratic decision, there is a legal question involved where someone, a parent or gardian could/will sue or subject teaching staff to abuse. A teacher cannot tell a parent to get stuffed and be sensible without inflaming the situation and landing themselves and the school in further trouble.

So I suppose that a room full of woodworking equipment could become a potential minefield. I stress that I do think that it is a shame that kids in NSW schools will not be taught how to use this equipment and I am dissapointed that that is the case - people need to be more responsible for their own actions.

Ah well, done a bit of spleen venting.

Hope this makes some sense - Peter

On a brighter note ..... I am sure that there will be great second hand machinery hitting the market soon for all of the weekend warriors

Sorry Stinky

And all the second hand gear will have not many people trained in how to use safely! I guess there will be a smaller pool of bidders and therefore better bargains.

So whose responsibility is it if someone who has completed a course in woodwork injures themselves on a piece of equipment they haven't been safely trained on? I am talking about general equipment such as a saw.

Maybe it is the responsibility of the Dept of Education to train people and if they have an accident due to lack of training then the Dept wears the cost.

Imagine a Driving School taking a similar attitude - showed them a couple of videos on how to drive but didn't put them in a car in case they became injured in an accident.

BTW Cyclones were not banned which should keep WD happy.

- Wood Borer

I'm not sure I agree.
When I did woodworking at school it was all hand tools. What Grammar school did you all go to??? We sure as hell didn't have angle grinders, radial arm routers, nail guns or spindle moulders! We had one table saw (that the teacher operated) and one router table (that the teacher operated).

I think there's a lot more value (and satisfaction) learning how to cut dovetails, mortices and tenons by hand than using routers and jigs. I can't imagine any school project you would be building that would require a student to use a radial arm saw. Teach them to use a chisel or handsaw!

Mind you, this was years 8-10, not sure what we would have done in years 11-12.

With regards to writing to your school or local member, I don't think it's their fault. It's not even the student's fault. It's the parents (and that means most of us!). Unfortunately, and I don't know why it is, but somewhere along the way, we lost our sense of responsibility and duty, and we now expect everyone else to look after our kids, except ourselves! Maybe people find it so hard to make ends meet these days, that litigation and cash payouts are seen as legitimate sources of income!

As a result, I don't think the schools have much choice. I agree it's very sad, but until the whole issue of compensation payouts is resolved, this will happen to woodwork classes, school fairs (remember the donkey or tractor rides), and all sorts of community activities. (I hope no one on this BB is a lawyer)

Originally posted by John G
When I did woodworking at school it was all hand tools. What Grammar school did you all go to??? We sure as hell didn't have angle grinders, radial arm routers, nail guns or spindle moulders! We had one table saw (that the teacher operated) and one router table (that the teacher operated).

I went to a technical (read school with lots of farmers) school and did woodwork from years 7-9 (unfortunately 10-12 was all advanced science and maths ). The only machiney that we were allowed near was a lathe and a disk sander ..... come to think of it I think the disk sander was taken away as the children didn't cut the stock to size before sanding ... they just let the sander do the work.

No real easy answer to this one .... you really have to use the tool to be able to do so safely .... are the kid in years 7-10 to irresponsible to be trusted around power tools these days?

Ahhh ..... the good old days.