Most schools teach more than academic studies and subjects. Unfortunately, they often do an incomplete job when educating with these additional or extra-curricular tasks. Let's take a few examples.

Safety with knives

Arts and crafts are often taught from a very young age. The materials of yesteryear have advanced from crayon boxes to utility knives, and children are now taught how to carve out and create exquisite, modern objects from paper, cardboard, or plastic.

These children are told to bring utility knives from home. The teacher demonstrates how to cut out a design or an object, and then the children are asked to do the same. They are given no preliminary safety rules. As a result, some children do what they think they saw the teacher do. Others may not have been paying attention. As a result, they may place the paper over their hands - and slice their hands.

When the knife is not in use, they may hold it idly in their outstretched hands. Those walking by may cut their clothes or injure themselves.

Strangely, teachers and schools do not learn the need for safety. The teacher's next class will "feature" the same level of incompetent level of instruction. The problems will be repeated. Children will again be taught how to create shapes, but they will not be taught how to use the tools safely. They never learn how to protect their property, their health, and the health and safety of others.

Lag Ba'Omer fires

Before Lag Ba'Omer, the children in many Jewish communities are taught to make bonfires. Strangely, this activity is taught with far more enthusiasm than many other mitzvahs. Accordingly, the children give it a high priority in their lives. They absolutely must make that fire, and stay up very late with other children.

The fire is nice. It's exciting. However, the children are given no safety rules:

• They are not taught that an adult must be present during the entire bonfire
• They are not taught how to prepare for the fire, in order to prevent adjacent objects from catching fire
• They are not taught to put out the fire when they are through
• They are not taught that a fire must never be left unattended

As a result, many children abandon the fire when they are bored. the embers of the fire are often left unattended, after which the fire may grow and spread.

Context

Children studing English as a second or a foreign language are "taught" to understand the meaning of unfamiliar words by using the context. Unfortunately, they are rarely taught rules for understanding those words. They are asked to listen to the sound of the sentence, and to select a word from a list that could replace it. The correct word is obvious to the teacher, but much less so to the students.

Teachers generally are not familiar with scientific rules of context. They teach the topic in the wrong way, and thus they do little more than frustrate their students.

Summary

Utility knives, fires, and context studies are all good if they are taught properly. Otherwise, they can be dangerous and result in disappointing educational practice.

Children are taught these subjects as if they are adults, and the schools wrongly assume that they have the requisite and concomitant experience, knowledge, and awareness of safety procedures.

These subjects are not intended for the young, but they are taught to the young anyhow after making faulty assumptions.

Those of us who have chosen education as our field should teach our subjects in a way that will be productive andhealthy. We should also be more selective about the topics that are engendered to our youth.