Ralph -
Agree 110%... For decades as a K-12 Director of Science, I had gotten student teachers in Biology, Chemistry and Physics at the secondary level. Invariably they had little to no lab safety preparation. In fact - they had learned everything you should not do for lab safety. Unfortunately from a health, safety and legal perspective, this put the school district, teacher and their students at higher risk for a serious safety incident. This is even more of the situation when the school district does not embrace the safety piece as required for most schools under the OSHA Lab Standard and HazCom Standard.
Again - the tertiary level needs to step up to the plate on this critical safety issue - a mandatory course in safety and ethics is a great way to start!
Kudos -
Ken
Kenneth R. Roy, Ph.D.
Director of Environmental Health & Chemical Safety
Glastonbury Public Schools, CT;
Chief Safety Compliance Adviser
National Science Teachers Association
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On Thursday, April 20, 2017 10:49 AM, "Stuart, Ralph" <ralph.stuart**At_Symbol_Here**KEENE.EDU> wrote:
>I revisited and revised this to include Teach Safety.
This is a good point that I'm appreciating more and more. Safety education doesn't happen without conscious thought, so it's important to be explicit about this. For this reason, I'm becoming more convinced that a separate course in lab safety (which can include ethics as well) is necessary in the chemistry curriculum. For a long time, I thought that incorporating lab safety content into the normal curriculum makes the most sense, but lately I don't think that there's as much opportunity for this as I had hoped...
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
