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That it happened once is bad enough but twice?
Lad 1 - I'm going to go against the instructions and hold the part at an angle off the table. Ouch. That hurt.
Lad 2 - You just weren't holding it well enough, see I'll show you. Ouch. That hurt even more.
thecaptain
My wife machine-sewed her finger into the garment she was making a few years ago.Needle right through the nail, thread attached and all.
My wife did that and apparently yanked her finger out of the way, which snapped the needle but left the broken end still poking through her finger.
Makes my bum clench just thinking about it.
stumpy01 , based on your username I'd have expected a more graphic contribution to this thread
OP before you make a complaint the first thing you need to identify is not what you want to complain about but what you want them to change.
My first thoughts are don't forget H&S at work 1974 applies. If your child was unable to hold a pen and do their schoolwork this was a lost time incident. Do you suspect the school may have avoided seeking further medical attention beyond what was administered by their first aider to avoid an A&E trip which would have involved a whole lot more paperwork for them.
tbh it was exactly the same in the mid 90s when I did my DT GCSE 🤷♂️ Thing I made didn’t even work properly & I still got a B 😂t’s more about design, prototyping and concept development now – all good things but it’s a shame the final outcome is no longer all that important.
tbh it was exactly the same in the mid 90s when I did my DT GCSE 🤷♂️ Thing I made didn’t even work properly & I still got a B 😂
No it wasn't.
Back then - yes (I've been teaching that long!) - the final made thing was worth 40% of the coursework mark and that was worth 70% of the overall module. So the final outcome was worth 28% of the overall grade. so whilst you could **** it right up and still get a B if you had enough about you in the other sections, you can no longer drag a kid 'challenged on paper' but with great hand skills to a pass like you once could. YMMV on if this is a good or bad thing.
Well, I have no idea what the percentages were, but we certainly spent way too much time (IMO) on the “portfolio” (‘research’, isometric drawings etc) and very little on actual workshop time/learning useful skills.
I’d earn more as a joiner, plumber, electrician than I do now. The subset of people with degrees, the admin skills, the patience and the pastoral skills to be a modern day teacher AND with the practical wherewithal to do it in DT is vanishingly small.
When i graduated (BEng Mech Eng), anyone who got a 2:2 or 3rd was invited to do a PGCE and move into Maths or DT teaching, those who got 1st or 2:1 were offered a masters place, shows how devalued it was as recently as the mid 90s.
I got a 3rd. And you couldn't have paid me enough to spend another year studying to then go and deal with school kids...
No it wasn’t.
It was actually, the options my school offered when i chose my A-Levels still included several courses, something along the lines of Woodwork, Metalwork, Electronics and Technical Drawing/CAD.
Though by the time we actually started that September, everyone was lumped into Design Technology.
IIRC Tech drawing had no "product" at the end barring a complete set of drawings.
I hadn't chosen any of them anyway, so didn't bother me...
Lad 1 – I’m going to go against the instructions and hold the part at an angle off the table. Ouch. That hurt.
Lad 2 – You just weren’t holding it well enough, see I’ll show you. Ouch. That hurt even more.
Exactly.
And between 1 and 2 the bloody machine should have been isolated until everyone got a safety reminder and proper confirmation they know what they're doing.
If it's good enough for industry losing 900k a day for outages it's good enough for teaching!
Back then – yes (I’ve been teaching that long!) – the final made thing was worth 40% of the coursework mark and that was worth 70% of the overall module. So the final outcome was worth 28% of the overall grade. so whilst you could **** it right up and still get a B if you had enough about you in the other sections, you can no longer drag a kid ‘challenged on paper’ but with great hand skills to a pass like you once could. YMMV on if this is a good or bad thing.
I was in the GCSE guinea pig year in 1998. My CDT Technology class was a disgrace. The teacher's idea of teaching was to take a register, slope off to the staff room to chain smoke, then come back 10 minutes before the bell went to make sure we packed up.
My project was as close to non-existent as makes no odds, I had some draft scribbles of a design and a Meccano frame. I'd learned nothing in two years. Two weeks before the exam I realised I was in trouble, broke into the CDT lab, picked the lock on the cupboard and stole one of each textbook. I spent that fortnight self-teaching two years' worth of CDT Tech at the expense of any other revision. I got a B. To this day I don't quite know how that happened!
Exactly.
And between 1 and 2 the bloody machine should have been isolated until everyone got a safety reminder and proper confirmation they know what they’re doing.
If it’s good enough for industry losing 900k a day for outages it’s good enough for teaching!
Do you think they would have told the teacher after 1 received a maskable injury, or after 2 received a non-maskable injury?
If the teacher didn't know 1 had happened until after 2 had happened, what were they supposed to do?
CDT is a dieing subject. Techie teachers are thin on the ground. We're a school of 870 and very soon will have 1 techie teacher, should be 3.
As somebody who had two old school techie teachers without degrees (IIRC one had been a hands on type engineer, the other came from a more design/drawing room type background but still with experience of working in a workshop), I often think schools are not only lacking having that real world experience in teaching environments, but they've made the entry requirements to teaching too high.
I think my CDT lessons did benefit from that variety in teachers, as the teachers were rotated.
Old school engineer mostly for the hands on metal working.
Old school drawing room mostly for the design and wood/plastic working.
Then the head of department was a bit younger with a full degree background, and although he could teach everything, as they all could, he mostly stuck to the graphics side, as he knew the other teachers were far better at the practical side, and full of practical tips from having worked in those environments.
IMo the best combination is a degree educated teacher who leads the course/department (and does a bunch of the teachery nause that comes with the job beyond the subject) ably assisted by tutor technicians. Definition of a tutor technician being that they are student facing, working directly with the kids as well as the prep/ maintenance to the point the teacher can be elsewhere if needed and the tutor technician is often the first port of call for a kid wanting assistance. Teacher and tutor technician work in a close relationship to make sure the kids are designing things they can make and tick the coursework requirements. Tutor technicians often are highly skilled folk, normally non graduates from industry who also know how to handle kids.
Sadly this level is support and staffing is only normally seen in independent schools and even them only in one that prioritise the subject.
I do love it when the OP doesn't return to update their thread 🤷♂️🤔
If the teacher didn’t know 1 had happened until after 2 had happened, what were they supposed to do?
Read the Op 🙄
I think we need pictures of the "good chunk off the tips of 5 fingers including a good portion of the nails"
To me, on the surface, that would suggest the kid managed to sand his fingers down to the bone on the finger tips, on a belt sander.
I suspect the injury isn't quite as drastic as that, but that is pure speculation on my part, and without further detail, we are all just speculating.
Given that the nurse "popped a couple of plasters on" i suspect it wasn't that traumatic
I do love it when the OP doesn’t return to update their thread 🤷♂️
It happens when everyone else on the thread disagrees! 🤣
fatmaxFull Member
Username checks out! 😀
I've got a pair of these, and they could take someones finger clean off with out even realising it!
IMO the best combination is a degree educated teacher who leads the course/department (and does a bunch of the teachery nause that comes with the job beyond the subject) ably assisted by tutor technicians.
That's basically what we had, we had "head of DT" who did all the classroom stuff/drawing and CAD, wore a three piece suit, had a moustache, occasionally smoked a pipe, think he'd worked in engineering design or a similar/parallel industry.
Then 3 "teachers" who had all (as far as i know) retired or quit their original careers in their 50's and moved into teaching. All had some gnarly scars, swearing at the kids was overlooked by senior staff and occasionally someone would get physically restrained or removed from the room for doing something stupid. Hand like a packet of pork sausages would appear over your shoulder and you'd find yourself going backwards rapidly.
Then we had Keith the tech who used to look after all the machines and do the "complicated" stuff. Like the punch card programmable lathe and milling machine, the vac-former and the grandly named "electronics lab" which was an old store room with a massive fan in the window to extract the fumes from a dozen 13 year old's learning to solder. More accurately described as "burning stuff" and "making components explode by wiring them up wrong". It was so cold in the winter i'm amazed we could even get the solder to melt.
That was a school of ~2000, we needed about twice as many staff as we had and the school was bulldozed in the late 90's early 00's as it was monumentally crap.
I feel sympathetic to tagnut jr but...
He was doing as he was instructed as was his mate.
If thats so, did the other 28ish kids in the class also suffer the same injuries?
Ah, bunsen burners. I told my 10 year old when we looked around secondary school a few weeks back of all the fun we had with bunsen burners... all those times of just lighting gas taps and having horizontal jets of flame shooting across desks, of heating tongs until they melted and bits fell on the floor only for some dumbass (me) to pick up the dropped off bit and have the bumpy end of a tong branded into my finger tips for months 😀
Ah, bunsen burners. I told my 10 year old when we looked around secondary school a few weeks back of all the fun we had with bunsen burners…
I think I was doing my degree when we needed to grow cells in a petri dish or similar. Beetroot was the cell selected, and needed to be sterile. Sterilisation, by dipping in alcohol and burning off the alcohol in a bunsen. I looked around the lab at one point and saw more than one flaming beetroot rolling across the floor, and one fellow student with their sleeve on fire.
Don’t know how I found this thread randomly last night, but read with interest.
Now sat in A&E with wife getting the back of her hand stitched up after she tried to open a paint can with a chisel 🤦♂️
Didn’t even open the can! But did get blood all over the wall… before she called me at work.
Obviously no decent DT lessons at her school in the 90s!
Hope OP son is ok, if no serious damage it sounds like a good learning experience
Now sat in A&E with wife getting the back of her hand stitched up after she tried to open a paint can with a chisel
Everybody knows you use the screwdriver handed down from your grandfather!
More seriously, hope it's minor and she heals quick
Don’t know how I found this thread randomly last night, but read with interest.
Now sat in A&E with wife getting the back of her hand stitched up after she tried to open a paint can with a chisel 🤦♂️
Didn’t even open the can! But did get blood all over the wall… before she called me at work.
Obviously no decent DT lessons at her school in the 90s!
Hope OP son is ok, if no serious damage it sounds like a good learning experience
My brother had his own locksmith business for a while. Whilst fitting a lock to a door once, he slipped with a wide chisel and embedded it deep in his wrist. The picture he showed me was grim and made me genuinely queasy! By some miracle, it managed to miss the many vital tendons, nerves and arteries that congregate in that area!
I hope she's sueing B&Q, to stay on topic to the OP.
My last little chisel injury(With offending chisel). Serves me right for putting a finger in front of the blade paring out a small rebate when fitting a door lock. Only the 4 stitches.
Maybe not back on to topic so quickly...
There's a great book about the importance and relevance and advantages of working using ones hands. It's called Shopcraft as Soulcraft and I thoroughly recommend it. It is American centric, but the issues and philosophies discussed are fairly universal.
We were chatting about this subject yesterday at work with an HSE inspector (we are a COMAH site). She was lamenting the lack of practical lessons in schools as young people are having a reduced perception of hazards/risks as they enter industry work after leaving school.
My last little chisel injury(With offending chisel).
Please tell me that 3 seconds before that happened you'd just thought 'Hold on, if this slips I'm in danger of losing a finger'
And then carried on anyway.
after she tried to open a paint can with a chisel 🤦♂️
…erm - may have done that more than once myself!! 🤣🤣
I remember sanding my finger in woodwork class back in the day!
It hurt but I learned my lesson!
Everybody knows you use the screwdriver handed down from your grandfather!
I watched my Dad embed a screwdriver in his hand trying to fix a wing mirror on my sister's 200 quid Vauxhall Shovit.
He was all WorldClassAccident about it and just pulled it out and carried on.
My wife machine-sewed her finger into the garment she was making a few years ago.Needle right through the nail, thread attached and all.
Many years ago, during the time of three-day weeks, power cuts and the Falklands War, I worked for a small print and publishing company, and I was going out with a lass who’d started as a sales rep. She was also often asked to help out with stuff in print finishing, things like collating pages for binding a such. One day I came back from lunch and someone asked if I’d heard about Kim. My stomach immediately did that lurching thing as I was asking what had happened. She was at the hospital, she’d been stapling self-covered books that we published, and her attention had wandered and she’d put a wire staple right through one fingertip… 🤢
She was fine, was back on the stapler the next day, but keeping a heavily bandaged finger well out of the way of the machine.
We’re still good friends, I must remember to ask her if she remembers doing that.
One day I came back from lunch and someone asked if I’d heard about Kim. My stomach immediately did that lurching thing as I was asking what had happened. She was at the hospital, she’d been stapling self-covered books that we published, and her attention had wandered and she’d put a wire staple right through one fingertip… 🤢
Weirdly enough my Mum did that too ... but she was working in a hospital at the time.
And she had a daughter called Kim.
^all said with a smile btw. Do hope that hand heals up nicely.
Did we ever find out what happened with the OP , the serious hand injury treat with dressings at home and the school?
It’s been 2 months since the last update.
Chisels are for amateurs.
Ever seen a set of sheep shears?
My dad slipped shearing a massive ram. They went in his thigh, hit the bone and deflected towards.
I take the don't run with scissors thing alot more seriously now.
re. the stapler thing. I had to wait for 10 mins at John Lewis in Cheadle, Manchester last year because the single cashier at the tills I was using managed to staple a customer receipt and guarantee card to her finger. She seemed most unconcerned as she went to find the first aider. The replacement cahier said, oh yes, she does that sort of thing all the time when I commented about it. 🤣
On the rare occasion I maim a pupil in my science lessons
I had a science teacher at middle school who, when kids were pissing about, would stealthily approach with a wooden metre-rule a whack the wooden benches to get their attention. Always did the job until one day the ruler snapped, clipped one of the kids causing a cut and blood everywhere, then shattered the window of the science lab 'classroom'. (Circa 1984 and the classroom was portacabin style). Most of his science experiments would go wrong too.
The replacement cahier said, oh yes, she does that sort of thing all the time when I commented about it. 🤣
I used to work with a girl who earned herself the close-to-her-actual-name nickname of Debbie Bomb's-Dropped. Never has a name been more appropriate. She was lovely really, but she was a walking disaster area with the common sense of a Whitworth spanner.
As a random example, she came to me asking for help one day after she'd tried to mop the floor of the walk-in freezer. As I recall, that turned out to be a chisel job in the end as well.
Another one that leaps to mind, she was tasked with cleaning a small counter-top coffee dispenser. Basically you open the front, pull out the coffee and chocolate hoppers, disassemble a couple of other parts and put them on soak, then give the rest a wipe down. She'd been gone ages so I went back to check on her, found her waddling across the room with a large bucket of water. I asked she was doing. She looked at me incredulously (or at least she would have done if she had any credule), goes "my god that thing can hold a lot of water, can't it!" She'd drained it of multiple bucketsful and was still going. It was plumbed in to the mains water supply.
There was something like this every single shift, pretty much.
During my apprentice phase, i was told to wash an industrial sausage filler.
I filled it with hot and soapy, closed the lid and switched it on, which brought the 415v 10hp hydraulic ram up. Due to being young and unaware(aka thick) I'd sealed the entire system. Water pressure grew to the point to failed at a nylon wedge I'd hammered into the filler outlet(To stop the water pouring out), which then came out at warp factor 9.9. That flew 20 odd feet and through a chill wall. Had I been standing in front of it it would probably have killed me.