If It Kills One Child

The high costs of risk aversion are coming home to roost with a Helmet Generation long on self-importance and short on leadership;

Teachers who refuse to let children take risks are undermining the economy, a former director general of the Confederation of British Industry says today.
In a savage attack on the health and safety culture in schools, Sir Digby Jones says that a generation of “cotton wool kids” are applying for jobs without any leadership or entrepreneurial skills.
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In the report, he says there have been numerous examples of “excessive risk aversion” in schools which must be stamped out if children are to develop properly. Head teachers have forced children to wear goggles when playing conkers and outlawed the backstroke in case pupils hit each other in the swimming pool, he says.
A survey of science teachers recently revealed that 87 per cent had not allowed students to take part in experiments in case they were injured.
Sir Digby says: “We hear of school sports days where there are no winners for fear of causing permanent damage to the self-esteem and emotional development of the ‘losers’. One of my colleagues at the CBI told me that when his eight-year-old was winning a race he was instructed to hold back to give his fellow competitors the chance to catch up.
“There have even been reports of schools banning ball games and teachers refusing to referee matches for fear of the consequences of injury.”
According to Sir Digby, the prevailing culture of risk aversion “is potentially fatal to our economics and social wellbeing”.
CBI research revealed a third of employers had to train 16-year-olds up to an acceptable standard of literacy and numeracy in their first year of employment. Two thirds said the teenagers lacked self-management skills and three quarters said they did not have a basic understanding of business and finance.
Last week, a report by the Association of Graduate Recruiters said that many vacancies were being left unfilled because even academically bright students did not have the necessary “soft skills”, such as communication and leadership.
“If we never took a risk our children would not learn to walk, climb stairs, ride a bicycle or swim; business would not develop innovative new products, move into new markets and create wealth for all; scientists would not experiment and discover; we would not have great art, literature, music and architecture,” says Sir Digby.
He adds that by attempting to remove risk, “all adults are colluding in a shameful deceit; not only are we regulating the lifeblood of enterprise out of people, we are also teaching the next generation of wealth creators that risk, failure and competition do not exist.”

Via Peaktalk.
SDA Flashback – The Risk Takers.