"You'd think" is indeed a catchphrase of mine, and will probably be my epitaph. :-/
My view on it was that some of the things being banned were sensible, others were less sensible and lumping the two together was unhelpful. Wouldn't you think?
I'm not convinced there's any objective way of measuring "sensibleness", though presumably you could do some sort of cost/benefit analysis based on the amount of effort policing these sort of bans would involve, and the (harder to measure) benefit of doing so.
I've been reading Scenes from the Battleground (http://www.infet.co.uk/blog/index.php/a/a) (battlegroundrss) recently, which has left me with the distinct impression that snowballs would be quite a long way down the priority list of things to try to stamp out in schools -- with things like knives being a lot further up the list.
I do get the feeling that there's a general trend towards trying to outlaw risk ("if it's legal, it must be safe; if it's not safe, it should be illegal"), and a corresponding trend away from encouraging people to take personal responsibility for their actions or the consequences thereof.
[I really need to do some active research (rather than the kind of drive-by blog-absorbing that I do at the moment) to find people who are writing well and interestingly about attitudes to risk in society.]
I shamelessly stole the bingo card from this one (http://www.tuaw.com/2007/01/05/keynote-bingo-for-macworld-07/). (brrm actually recognised it!)
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Date: 2007-02-12 10:22 am (UTC)My view on it was that some of the things being banned were sensible, others were less sensible and lumping the two together was unhelpful. Wouldn't you think?
I'm not convinced there's any objective way of measuring "sensibleness", though presumably you could do some sort of cost/benefit analysis based on the amount of effort policing these sort of bans would involve, and the (harder to measure) benefit of doing so.
I've been reading Scenes from the Battleground (http://www.infet.co.uk/blog/index.php/a/a) (
I do get the feeling that there's a general trend towards trying to outlaw risk ("if it's legal, it must be safe; if it's not safe, it should be illegal"), and a corresponding trend away from encouraging people to take personal responsibility for their actions or the consequences thereof.
[I really need to do some active research (rather than the kind of drive-by blog-absorbing that I do at the moment) to find people who are writing well and interestingly about attitudes to risk in society.]
I shamelessly stole the bingo card from this one (http://www.tuaw.com/2007/01/05/keynote-bingo-for-macworld-07/). (