Teachers scared of the 'blame-claim' culture

Daily Mail



Children are being wrapped up in cotton wool because teachers are scared of the 'blame-claim' culture, Sir Ranulph Fiennes has warned.

The explorer said teachers were so worried about being sued if pupils suffered accidents that they were put off arranging school trips.

He said youngsters should be encouraged to take part in the adventures enjoyed by children in the 1960s and 70s and argued that 'negative connotations' had become attached to the word 'risk'.

The adventurer, who has led expeditions to the North and South Poles, said that learning about risk was as important as learning core subjects such as maths and English.

'Throughout my life, taking measured risks has proved of great interest to me,' he said.

'There have been times when taking some form of risk was the only way to overcome an obstacle and giving up would have been the only alternative.

'Another way of putting it - as with many avenues of life - is that it's only through taking a bit of a risk that you reap rewards.'

He said that advertising ' encouraging everybody to attack with litigation anybody that could be blamed for anything' had ended the carefree culture of 30 or 40 years ago when schoolchildren enjoyed 'adventure outings'.

His comments came as a survey of 400 teachers by school tour organiser the Education Travel Group found that four in ten teachers are put off from arranging visits because they are concerned about litigation.

Sir Ranulph, 65, has had his fair share of scrapes.

In 2000, he attempted to walk solo to the North Pole, but the expedition failed when his sleds fell through ice and he suffered severe frostbite to his fingers.

Sir Ranulph, who was addressing an Independent Association of Prep Schools conference, said it was important to distinguish between recklessness and risk, as children would benefit from understanding and managing risk from an early age.

Breeders blame anying on everyone whrn the child get hurt even child killing accident. Even it was childkill accident, they always call it 'tragic'.

But they never blame themselves for their own neglagence. You breed, your responsible, not society.

This puts me in mind of a field trip my school organized when I was in grade school back in the 1960s. We went to a place outside of Chicago called “Hawthorn Melody Farms,” which was a large dairy farm/petting zoo. They basically just bussed us all up there and turned us loose........which MIGHT have been a tad irresponsible, but again, that WAS the culture back then. People in general were just more carefree and less fearful. We had an outstanding time there. There was a little railroad system there that didn’t appear to be in operation, but a gang of us kids seized a lone rail car, some of us sat in the seats, and some of us began pushing it down the tracks till we built up a considerable speed. Oh, the disasters that COULD have happened! At one point one of our classmates, a tiny little bit of a girl, put her hand through a fence and seized hold of a ring that was through the nose of a massive bull. She did NOT yank or yell at the bull, but just held onto him, and he remained placid. In fact, near as I can recall, NONE of the kids abused or annoyed any animals there. We were a well-brought-up bunch, despite coming from a poor-to-lower-middle-class inner-city neighborhood. My old teacher Mr. Jaffe, god bless him, just looked at that girl holding onto that enormous bull by its nose-ring, laughed a bit, and said “well now that you’ve got him, what’re you going to do with him?”

Sigh........different times, different times. That was a glorious day.

That trip sounds wonderful...I wouldn't mind going as an adult. Can you imagine it happening today without a slew of parental lawsuits? Kids today are missing out.

Kids today NEED "adventures".

So they will LEARN survival skills.

Just to say that the school trips that Sir Ranulph is referring to are a bit different from those that they have in the US.

In the US, school trips consist of stuff like the zoo, the nature centre, the visitors' deck on the tall skyscraper downtown, something historical like a mock log cabin or a simulated coal mine, etc.

In the UK, school trips might be like that, but typical school trips -- even for 12-13 year olds -- can include an overnight at a castle, 5 days of skiing in the Alps, 3 days hiking and camping at Lake Windermere, a week's tour of southern Spain, a few days in Paris, and even if it's a single day it might be outward-bound activities like zipwire rides, beginners rock climbing, canoeing, etc. Not one academic year goes by without a small number of pupils on trips drowing in rivers, smashing themselves open on the slopes, or getting raped by a weird French drifter who broke into the hostel where they were staying.

I'm not against the idea of risk, but I am against the idea that they have trips here, trips there, trips everywhere-- and yet it's somehow acceptable that they leave school at 16 totally under-educated and virtually illiterate, but with all As on their report cards.

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