We know that young children are impressionable and developmentally immature, ripe for exploitation, abuse and indoctrination. These are ethical values all teachers are educated in from the very start. The foundation of every profession is a well-articulated ethic and moral philosophy. The opposite of education is indoctrination.

Unfortunately, Safety doesn’t get it.

I came across this group (https://www.thesafetysuperheroacademy.co.uk/) recently and could not think of anything more anti-safety, anti-educational and unethical than indoctrinating young children in the biases of hyper-safety.

The last thing kids need is some obsessive fixation on safety couched in the language of super-heroes. I know let’s give out high-viz vests to 10 years-olds and name them ‘safety heroes’. And of course, this comes from a source with no expertise in education, child development or ethical competence.

We see this so often in safety, where chemical engineers are mythologists and historians, engineers lecture in ethics, non-educators lecture in learning teams and a cert 4 in safety makes on an expert in anthropology and culture.

Children don’t need any more indoctrination on safety. Children need the freedom to risk.

Having worked in schools, founded schools, lectured in child development and ethics, I have never seen anything more deplorable in my life.

And we get this: ‘safety isn’t just a career, it’s a vital part of life’. NO ITS NOT!!!! What is it with this obsession with safety? No, Safety is not your life (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-is-not-your-life/).

If you are one of these people who gets up in the morning and thinks safety, go back to bed, the world doesn’t need you. The world (and children) need to know how to li8ve life, tackle risk and understand being.

When I worked in the Education Department we used to ban groups like this from schools in the same way we banned religious groups.

What is worse, the idea of anchoring safety to superheroics is mythology that takes safety out of the realm of everyday being, to the nonsense idea that you have to be a hero to be safe.

And who sponsors this stuff? Not Education institutions but safety groups. No-one in their right educational mind and expertise would want to endorse indoctrination like this in any school.