ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades PC has killed Experimentation?

Hold on a minute, I am not talking about the Personal Computer, although it has a real case to answer.
What I am talking about is Political Correctness, it is now not PC to allow your children, to run around and play in the mud and also so it seems, it is wrong to let them have a Chemistry set or a small set that teaches kids about Electronics, because of the inherent risk of injury, this is the new Commissioner for Children in NZ speaking.
Sorry that I have no E-mail link to this guy, but if I had one, I would be on to it, like a Doberman, to a piece of Steak.
What are your thoughts on this rubbish?.
Teach the kids Real Science, not the Cr*p, shoved down thier throats by PC teachers.

Good point Trumpy. When I was a kid (early-mid 1970s) the chemistry sets, junior radio kits etc. were quite popular. I had a "Junior Chemist" set when I was about 7 or 8, with all the usual sort of basic experimental stuff.

I never had one of the "99 Electronics Projects" types of kits, because I already had boxes full of old radio parts obtained from church jumble sales, a wonderful surplus parts shop in town, and various friends and neighbors who donated old unwanted equipment. I was playing around with batteries and bulbs from the age of about 6. I still remember building my first very simple radio at the age of 8, with some help from my father! (Thanks Dad, and to Mom for putting up with bits of wire and noises every weekend and listening to endless technical discussions over the dinner table -- I owe you both a lot!)

I remember using an Avo meter on live mains wiring and high voltages in tube radios under the supervision of my father from an early age. Somewhere along the way, it was decided that I knew enough not to get hurt on my own, and certainly by the time I was about 10 or 11 I was regularly diving into tube radios, tape recorders and so on by myself.

Sure, I could have gotten hurt. The only way to be sure of nothing bad ever befalling you is to never do anything.

The "PC brigade" these days would probably have fits at the things I was allowed to do (electrically wise). I wouldn't be surprised if some idiot social worker would decide it was cause to come breaking into the house at 6am with warrants for "child neglect" or whatever other ridiculous charges they could come up with.

I'm glad I was growing up 30 years ago, and not today.

I do a little tutoring for local colleges. New rule NO RED PEN MARKS FROM TEACHER! Why not? Well PC brigade feel it may have detremental effect on 20 year old students!

Lyle,
That is really ridiculous, if a 20 year old has not grown up enough, to realise the ways of the real world, what are they going to look like, at age 30.
But, this is the formulae of the PC people, no-one fails, you are given a Not Yet Competent mark, these days.
Lyle,
What is the standard Pass Mark required for a Registration as an Electrician, in Ireland?
Over here in NZ, it sank to 40%, only because the PC people said that the EWRB, should not excuse anyone because of thier inabilty to read the Regs.
Paul,
We all could have got "hurt", using our Chemistry sets and we could have got Electrocuted, had we plugged our projects, into the Mains.
But for God sakes, it's all common-sense, isn't it?.
Let's Get Real!!.

I'm with you guys...

We made gunpowder and the like in chemistry class. Once I and a friend managed to fill the whole classroom with smoke from a petrol-soap mixture. (Cool high flames, too.) In physics the teacher connected one of the girls to a high-voltage source so that her hair stood out like on film... I hope they haven't changed anything!

I no longer have all the recipies for drugs and explosives that were passed among us pupils. I'm sure those politically correct people would object to people learning how to make everything from LSD to RDX... (I suspect the school would have, had they known.)

How am I supposed to know what my mistakes are? Red is easy to see when you're looking at a piece of paper covered in black or blue in.

Who exactly are these "PC" creeps? How dare they tell me I can't play around with chemistry sets, hi-voltage electricity, etc.

If I want to, I should be able to play with a block of URANIUM if I wanted to....I'm well aware of the consequences, thank-you-very-much, as long as I don't harm anyone else.

Now I've really got a mind to dig up a neon sign transformer and build that Jacob's ladder!!

I think the "no red pen" rule was introduced into some schools here a few years ago. Teachers were instructed to use green instead, as being less likely to cause offense to students, or some such nonsense.

So next time you get a student in electrical class who decides that 240V into 10 ohms gives 2 amps, don't tell him he's wrong, just say he has "a unique perspective on the problem" so as not to cause him the terrible humiliation of getting his sums wrong. Utter nonsense.

I don't doubt this idiotic "no red" rule was dreamed up by the same group that decided it's wrong to tell a child that he's doing something naughty, as to do so might interfere with his natural development. Natural development into what? A young punk teenager who has no respect for anything or anybody and thinks he can just do what he likes?

Sven,
Judging by your post, I think you may like this quote. It's from a British author (no, not me!) who regularly writes an antique radio column. One month he recounted all sorts of experiments he did as a young teenager with the DC mains supply in his house during WWII. He ended with this:

He too mentioned what the modern-day PC brigade would probably think of a kid experimenting in this way today.


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 03-10-2003).]

Paul,
Why does that photo that you posted, sometime ago of a busted-up trailer-home, spring up in my mind?.
This may be the cause!.

Yes, the mobile home incident is a good example. We mentioned the lack of discipline in that thread too.

BTW, I hear that a couple of those young hoodlums have started causing trouble again.

It makes you wonder who educates who, nowadays!

Trumpy,
Pass mark is circa 45%. But I will let you into a little secret. Many college lecturers are under so much pressure to get their students through exams (because the college funding is based on "successful" output), that they actually tell their students the answers to the questions. And you know what? Some of the blighters still fail! Oops sorry, I mean they are still "not competent"!!

If this lot go out on electrical jobs and have to test whether a circuit is energized or not, I sure hope they can get the right answer a greater proportion of times than that!

Paul/Lyle,
The unfortunate thing about this whole thing,
is the fact that some experienced, well trained person, is going to be killed, eventually, by some-one (a trainee), that is not going to know the difference of Isolation and Re-commissioning.
Who would you blame?.
Just as an aside, do your apprentices go straight to Training, before the apprentice starts an apprenticeship, as they do over here?.

Is electrician a college education where you live? Here it's a highschool education.

C-H,
Could you please clarify what you mean, regarding Education?.

Phrased another way: If you want to become an electrician, do you decide that before high school or after? You must have some sort of formal training?

C-H,
Generally,these days schools over here, are starting to listen to Industry, who are saying that they want trainees that know the basics of Electricity, Electronics and Workplace Safety.
You still have to have at least 3 years of Secondary School Education to Qualify as an Electrical worker over here.
We now have a "Competence-Based" training system, which would take years to explain clearly, but basically, what it means, is that trainees who have more common-sense and iniative(sp?), will do better and will pass through the training than, say someone who can't even add 1+1 to get 2.
Normally the choice is made at school, these days, as to what the said student wants to do, whereas when I left school, the decision was made afterwards, and you took what you were told to take.
My mother nearly fainted, when I told her I was going to be a Fire-Fighter!.

I hope this thread isn't too old to revive.

Well, I'm one of the fortunate few (having wired my own extension cords since the age of 5 or 6); and indeed ironically seem to be way more of an engineer than many of the newbies put in charge of recent standards amendments (which often end up taking costly and ineffective "shotgun" approaches, to problems that could be fixed properly at lower cost with a better understanding). The original standards themselves, developed from the beginning into the 1980s, were generally much better thought-out from what I've gathered; and of course the biggest dangers are from junk which meets no standard.

Even in my spare time, I can put current mainstream "reviews" (made of course by terminal sufferers of the Dunning--Kruger effect) of simple items to shame as you can see in my mini-review thread at Hardware Insights (where I'm a staff member):
http://www.hardwareinsights.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=2160
I also catch a lot of junk just by astute observations, as you can see in my recalls thread there: http://www.hardwareinsights.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=2279

Here's hoping that at least a few people will follow my example, so simple items can be held to the same high standards as more complex technology (and therefore become as trouble-free as they rightfully should be).

And given the Dumbplex heater as included in my recalls thread, it looks like pauluk called it there. By now it's a wonder that anything basic ever gets done well...

I should really wish that electricians learned more about how things work.

I will not in any way claim that my temporaily solution for the broken pressostat on my water pump is safe, but it works and nobody else is close to it. Hopfully the new pressostat is arriving soon, even when I have to use another type than the original.

A plastic bottle expands with the pressure, and hits the switch :-)

If the moderator has a better place for this in the forum, pleas move it.

How are you isolating the motor load from that micros witch?

The microswitch take the full load, and it has been working so far. This is just an emergency solution.

I bet that won't last long. What is the pump HP and what is the switch rating. Most I have are 1a-5a inductive load.

While I find this dude /incredibly/ creepy, in the "could have a bad day, go psycho, irradiate the entire neighborhood, and teleport himself to Tahiti, and nobody could stop him... or would even be surprised" kind of way, I've certainly watched a decent number of hours...

Talking about PC.

P C is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end!