And in Australia we can’t even purchase fire works that go off with a bang. And blow the letter box metal lid onto the roof. And who didn’t make a fire cracker gun out of a metal bicycle pump and marbles. But it was hard to get the wick to come out of the hole in the end of the pump.
Regards, Roderick Wall. From: Roger Bailey Sent: Monday, May 28, 2012 1:56 PM To: Donald Christensen ; darkro...@aol.com Cc: sundial@uni-koeln.de Subject: Re: Why are schools, across the world,'banning' analemmatic sundials ? I was a free range kid, as were my kids. We created our own activities, took risks, and ended up learning from these experiences to accept personal responsibility and be creative. I ended up being a chemical engineer involved in research most of my life. As a kid, my personal chemistry set contained the forbidden stuff, strong oxidants, strong acids and bases, and poisonous chemicals. Explosives, rocket fuels, stink bombs etc where much more interesting the changing the colours of litmus paper. Our parents were generally unaware of our activities with minor exceptions. My father shut down our rocket society after a static test from a bedroom window. My mother objected to the escape of nine captured snakes into the house and neighbourhood. These were reasonable restrictions considering the situation. No rockets or snakes in the house? OK. Playgrounds with dangerous equipment like swings, slides, teeter totters, skipping ropes, analemmatic sundials are such trivial risks in comparison. Kids need to grow and develop. Give them space. Let them challenge themselves. Regards, Roger Bailey From: Donald Christensen Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2012 7:29 PM To: darkro...@aol.com Cc: sundial@uni-koeln.de Subject: Re: Why are schools, across the world,'banning' analemmatic sundials ? I was sickened how society prevents children from growing up or learning how to cope with life. That is until I read about Lenore Skenazy http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/ and Tim Gill http://rethinkingchildhood.com/ It looks like this will turn around. It may take a generation or 2 to do so. However, society is starting to figure out that the current idea is harmful to children. On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 11:44 AM, <darkro...@aol.com> wrote: Part of the problem seems to be that society is getting to a point where what ever happens there must be someone to blame. People just can't accept that stuff happens, get over it. It is true that if a child is over protected then they cannot learn how to effectively handle situations they face as they grow up. And with society looking for someone to blame for EVERYTHING that happens to them is proof that they have not learned the same thing. A child falls and skins a knee, the parents call the school and chew out the teacher for not watching their child. The sad thing is those of authority are too afraid of bad press of law suits that they may discipline the teacher. I don't know of any cases in the US where sundials are banned from schools but I have not looked either. It never crossed my mind that it would be a problem. -----Original Message----- From: Donald Christensen <dchristensen...@gmail.com> To: sundial <sundial@uni-koeln.de> Sent: Sun, May 27, 2012 8:29 pm Subject: Re: Why are schools, across the world, 'banning' analemmatic sundials ? I found an excellent book on the matter It shows how we are making the world more dangerous for children. Society protects them so much that we prevent them from learning how to cope in the stressful world. Children grow old. We can't prevent that. However we can prevent them from growing up. “Beautifully written [...] lays out very simply how we are absolutely screwing the development of children, given our complete paranoid fear of the world we live in.” Tanya Byron in the Browser. No Fear: Growing up in a risk averse society argues that childhood is being undermined by the growth of risk aversion. This restricts children’s play, limits their freedom of movement, corrodes their relationships with adults and constrains their exploration of physical, social and virtual worlds. http://rethinkingchildhood.com/no-fear/ On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 10:19 PM, Martina Addiscott <martina.addisc...@gmail.com> wrote: In message <20120517002755.K4ADT.56582.root@nschwwebs03p> John Pickard <john.pick...@bigpond.com> wrote: > Good morning Martina, > > I've been following the various replies, and I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments expressed about stupid attempts to reduce risk to zero. > > We all have our favourite stories, but I think that these examples will top the list. I understand that one of the largest mining companies in the world (Rio Tinto Australia) is so concerned about risk that it has banned the use of scissors and electric staplers. I have never seen an electric stapler where you could hurt yourself unless you really wanted to. And as for scissors ...! > > But I fail to see how a painted or other analemmatic dial poses any sort of risk, even in the Australian sun. All primary schools here require kids to wear hats when in the playground, and I support this. After all, Australia is the skin cancer capital of the world, and hats make a big difference (I know from having numerous non-malignant growths removed from my face, ears and neck after decades of field work in deserts etc.) But analemmatic dials ...? > > I despair of the direction all this is headed. > > Cheers, John > Following-on from previous correspondence, I was recently sent the attached newspaper article. George Marshall (in Australia) was 'too shy' to send it direct to the "Sundial Mailing List", and so this had been sent to me privately for my consideration. However, if anybody wants to respond to George (who is located in the Brisbane area) - his E-mail is: geo...@exemail.com.au At least there is now a 'ray of hope' that the world might just be reverting to a more reasonable attitude - rather than being ruled by the "Health & Safety" brigade, or Lawyers/Accountants. As other people have said, the main problem seems to be one of possible 'litigation', and/or 'compensation' - if a child were to be injured by anything (no matter how harmless it appears). I am certainly no legal expert - but apparently this is caused by a mix of "Due Diligence", plus "Contributory Negligence". Certainly here in the UK, we must conduct a 'Risk Assessment' of anything new for a school - and especially if the children might be physically interacting with this, in whatever ways. Unfortunately, the current thinking seems to be that (if any child were to be hurt), then SOMEBODY must be "to blame" - but it cannot be the child, since obviously somebody else has not fully conducted that preliminary 'Risk Assessment' properly ! In other words - somebody, somewhere, will be held as (partly) guilty of whatever happened, due to 'Contributory Negligence', but it will be for the Lawyers to fight over and profit from. Apart from schools, I even heard about a sundial designer (in Croatia), who was not permitted to put a metal 'analemmatic' layout into a public area - because the metal might get too hot in the sun, burn people's feet, so give rise to claims for compensation plus also potentially harming the tourist trade ! As a person on this 'List' said - "the world has gone crazy". Sincerely, Martina Addiscott. --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial -- Cheers Donald 0423 102 090 This e-mail is privileged and confidential. If you are not the intended recipient please delete the message and notify the sender. Un-authorized use of this email is subject to penalty of law. So there! --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial -- Cheers Donald 0423 102 090 This e-mail is privileged and confidential. If you are not the intended recipient please delete the message and notify the sender. Un-authorized use of this email is subject to penalty of law. 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