@SW-User That's not quite correct if you are referring to what I think.
It's not banned in any general sense at all even if individual schools ban the ancient game from their own premises.
The history is that the headmaster of one English school several years ago banned conkers from his school, fearing eye and hand injuries, and saying it was by "Health & Safety Law".
This created another widespread public stick - or conker on a string - with which to belabour the Heath and Safety Executive wrongly and unfairly.
The HSE, fed up with being blamed for inept local bans by ignorami against all sort of things, responded with a poster cartoon of two conker-playing children wearing flak-jackets and full face protection, with words basically saying "not us" and calling for sense.
It added wryly that if one child deliberately bashed another over the head with a conker, that would be assault and for the school to deal with!
@ArishMell The HSE website seems to have deleted the page but it can be found on the Wayback machine at https://web.archive.org/web/20221005190626/https://www.hse.gov.uk/myth/september.pdf
[quote][c=BF0000]The myth[/c] Kids must wear goggles to play conkers [c=BF0000]The reality [/c]This is one of the oldest chestnuts around, a truly classic myth. A well- meaning head teacher decided children should wear safety goggles to play conkers. Subsequently some schools appear to have banned conkers on ‘health & safety’ grounds or made children wear goggles, or even padded gloves! Realistically the risk from playing conkers is incredibly low and just not worth bothering about. If kids deliberately hit each other over the head with conkers, that’s a discipline issue, not health and safety.[/quote]
@ninalanyon That's the one - or similar. The one I saw had a different painting, as I remember it, but the same message!
The HSE will renew its materials from time to time so perhaps thought this had run its course.
Even worse - a writer in [i]Model Engineer[/i] magazine recently remarked on some students (from an unstated school or college) thought a hand-saw is for chopping, and one school that insisted on eye-protection when using scissors to cut paper!
@ArishMell Surely when cutting paper the biggest risk is to the fingers! They should have been wearing armoured gloves!
How times have changed I remember a science lesson in primary school in which we all trooped out into the fields across the road from the school and collected buttercups which we took back to the classroom and dissected them with safety razor blades wrapped in cloth adhesive plasters. No one was injured, no one attempted to injure anyone, and no one thought we were doing anything unusual; it was just a lesson in practical botany.
But perhaps the schools there and then were unusual in their emphasis on craft work, doing things rather than merely learning about them. We were always encouraged to do more, learn more.
@ninalanyon I couldn't agree more. Schools in the past would have been unusual if they had [i]not[/i] included any practical work. It seems to have been reversed.
I think the safety emphasis was teaching children to avoid hurting themselves by showing them how to do hazardous things, safely. Not removing the perceived hazards.
