Nanny State

[Clodfobble]

Yup. This is what happens when we de-fund all the schools. You can't blame them for caring about the bottom line, they have to.

One of the worst things a district can end up with is a blind kid in the neighborhood, because it's generally accepted that they get to go to a blind school, there's no way the school can hire a part time flunky at $10 an hour to cover it. The public school pays the tuition for the blind kid to go to the $30,000 per year school.

I know all this because I have a friend with a kid who is autistic and blind, and the school was arguing that she wouldn't get anything out of the blind school because of her other impairments, therefore they shouldn't have to pay for it. It's always, always about the money.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Man, that's depressing.

[Carruthers]

Earlier this week an elderly acquaintance told me that she took her small dog for a walk in the local woods when she encountered a group of primary school children and their teachers on an educational outing of some sort.
One of the kids came up to her and made a fuss of the dog which is a benign creature, and was instantly screamed at by a teacher. The reason behind her outburst wasn't that she feared the dog might attack, but that she had no means of cleaning the child's hands.
No doubt that eventuality wasn't included in the multi page risk assessment document that had to be completed prior to the expedition.
Ideally, you wash your hands before eating if you've had contact with the great outdoors, and if you are involved in food preparation of any description, especially in commercial operations, it is of paramount importance, but there doesn't seem to be any sense of proportion in these matters.
I get the distinct impression that kids are being brought up in a sterile bubble and probably won't develop the resistance to every day infections that they should.***

I spent twenty years up to my knees in horse... 'doings'.... and occasionally helped with lambing and was exposed to its attendant blood and gore. I've never suffered any ill effects as a result. (As far as I am aware!)

Rant over. Just going to prepare lunch and yes, I will wash my hands.



***Orthodoc, can you help out here? Is that a reasonable supposition?

[xoxoxoBruce]

[footfootfoot]

For all the good that supposition did me I might as well have, wait. What?

[Carruthers]

From this morning's edition of The Times:

Parents of Britain, Chris Packham has an important child-rearing tip for you. If you should find yourself in close proximity to a giraffe, it is essential that you let it lick your offspring’s face. And if that friendly giraffe is actually a wolf — even better.

The natural history broadcaster is deeply concerned about the poor level of engagement between young people and wildlife and believes one of the problems is that attitudes have changed since he was a boy. “I remember being licked by a giraffe in Southampton Zoo and my mum taking me by the hand to the toilets and saying ‘go in there and wash’. I stood looking in the mirror and I didn’t wash my hands and I didn’t wash my face. I had been licked by a giraffe! I didn’t want to wash it off. What would happen nowadays? 1) you wouldn’t get any where near a giraffe to get licked by it and 2) it would be first aid ,wouldn’t it, if you got licked by a giraffe? You’d have to be bathed in hand gel. It’s absurd.”

“This whole process is alien to children because they want to pick it up and touch it. The feel of worms, the feel of a caterpillar inching up their finger, the marvel of a ladybird gyrating round that finger and getting to the top of it turning this way and that and then taking flight; that’s the stuff of magic. What are you going to do? Wash their hands with hand gel?”

He really doesn’t like antiseptic hand gels. “When you ask a child to open their hands and you squirt that liquid and say ‘rub that in’ you are saying ‘you are in a dirty and dangerous place’. And when you say to them not to climb the tree because you might fall out and hurt yourself, you are instigating fear in that child.”

He sees a decline in the way children interact with the wild and he knows who he thinks is culpable. “Parents are to blame. Clearly we can’t blame kids. They are born with the same innate curiosity that all of us were, but parents have pulled back from allowing their kids to engage with it.

“When I was a kid I would get home, dump my bag before my mother realised I was back from school and I was over the fence and gone until it was dark. I happened to go looking for grass snakes and birds’ nests but the other kids were playing football down the park. They were doing their thing, independently of adults. Now they are taken to football, taken here and there.”

His golden rules for children and wildlife: “You have got to let them pick up those newts. They have got to be stung, slimed, slithered on and scratched.”

The article is behind Uncle Rupert's pay wall and I'm not sure if the usual 'measures' will allow you to access it, however, the above extracts are representative of the work.

The Times

[DanaC]

I love Packham.

I had such a crush on him when I was a young teen and he was presenting The Really Wild Show - and I'm pretty sure every lad in my year had a similar crush on Michaela Strachan lol.

[DanaC]

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by DanaC

...and I'm pretty sure every lad in my year had a similar crush on Michaela Strachan lol.

I still do!

[DanaC]

Understandable :P

[BigV]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

For all the good that supposition did me I might as well have, wait. What?

*chuckle*

[BigV]

@ Carruthers:

I add my hearty applause to xoB's for both of your recent posts here. I'm not able to offer double-blind, peer-reviewed, repeatable evidence of your conclusions, but in my own empirical experience, too much washing is as bad or worse than too little. Maybe I should say it this way, it's far easier to do too much washing than to do too little.

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by BigV

@ Carruthers:

Maybe I should say it this way, it's far easier to do too much washing than to do too little.

Spot on! The charitable side of me says that there is nothing wrong with the 'can't be too careful, err on the side of caution' approach, but the World weary side says it's just another cynical arse covering exercise.

From the British Medical Journal:

A large outbreak of Escherichia coli O157 at a farm in Surrey has resulted in 12 children needing hospital treatment. Three of them remain seriously ill.

The Health Protection Agency said that 36 cases of E coli O157 have been linked to Godstone farm, near Redhill in Surrey. The farm, which lets children pet and feed animals, receives up to 2000 visitors a day during school holidays

As briefly alluded to earlier I was, for years, in close proximity to equine, ovine and bovine waste matter, the latter known to harbour E-coli 157, without suffering ill effects. I know that, as an adult, my resistance to infection would be greater than that of a child, but I just wonder if these children had been brought up in an anti-septic wiped, disinfected, sterile bubble and consequently suffered more as a result.

[DanaC]

Maybe the bacteria strains are stronger/more prevalent with modern farming methods?

Or maybe there were always some kids who got ill from that stuff but it was just called a tummy bug - and not reported/recorded the way it is now.

[DanaC]

From wiki:

The prophage responsible seems to have infected the strain's ancestors fairly recently, as viral particles have been observed to replicate in the host if it is stressed in some way (e.g. antibiotics).

Given the modern practice of using preventative antibiotics in farm animals this might account for a greater prevalence than when you were a kid.