It’s an inherent safety issue for minors to work dangerous equipment. I don’t care how old or mature they are, they don’t have the necessary judgment and experience of the average adult to safely handle the machinery. I’ve been doing safety analysis at work lately for processes with high pressure flammable gases, and I would evaluate an unsafe situation to be even more unsafe if a minor was operating equipment.
Learning to use machinery or generally dangerous equipment safely is a valuable skill for students to learn, but in a CONTROLLED environment under DIRECT supervision of a trained teacher. This is why we have shop classes. In middle school my teacher taught us how to use a bandsaw and drill press safely, and then directly supervised our first usage. After that we could use it without direct supervision, but the teacher still kept an eye on the area and was more than happy to shout if they saw something unsafe. Labs in science classes are also a great opportunity to teach students to handle dangerous things in a controlled environment.
Frankly it’s unconscionable for any adult to approve this kind of work for a minor and a gross dereliction of responsibility. Did kids on farms use that equipment safely back in the day? Sure! But that doesn’t mean we should continue the practice. And there’s a world of difference between cold corporate training you on equipment vs your parents teaching you and watching you carefully. It’s fucking disgraceful.
Adults have a hard time following safety guidelines. Letting a kid be around any potentially dangerous machinery that doesn’t have an insane number of engineering controls is just negligent.
We literally consider procedural/human actions to be one of the least reliable safeguards and don’t even credit it as protection in semi quantitative safety analysis
I even knew that as a teen. I got a job at a place where they wanted me to use a meat slicer for sandwiches when I was 16 and I noped the fuck out when they tried to train me on it.
It’s an inherent safety issue for minors to work dangerous equipment. I don’t care how old or mature they are, they don’t have the necessary judgment and experience of the average adult to safely handle the machinery. I’ve been doing safety analysis at work lately for processes with high pressure flammable gases, and I would evaluate an unsafe situation to be even more unsafe if a minor was operating equipment.
Learning to use machinery or generally dangerous equipment safely is a valuable skill for students to learn, but in a CONTROLLED environment under DIRECT supervision of a trained teacher. This is why we have shop classes. In middle school my teacher taught us how to use a bandsaw and drill press safely, and then directly supervised our first usage. After that we could use it without direct supervision, but the teacher still kept an eye on the area and was more than happy to shout if they saw something unsafe. Labs in science classes are also a great opportunity to teach students to handle dangerous things in a controlled environment.
Frankly it’s unconscionable for any adult to approve this kind of work for a minor and a gross dereliction of responsibility. Did kids on farms use that equipment safely back in the day? Sure! But that doesn’t mean we should continue the practice. And there’s a world of difference between cold corporate training you on equipment vs your parents teaching you and watching you carefully. It’s fucking disgraceful.
Adults have a hard time following safety guidelines. Letting a kid be around any potentially dangerous machinery that doesn’t have an insane number of engineering controls is just negligent.
We literally consider procedural/human actions to be one of the least reliable safeguards and don’t even credit it as protection in semi quantitative safety analysis
Procedures aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. Well. Until a manager wants to blame an employee for getting hurt.
I even knew that as a teen. I got a job at a place where they wanted me to use a meat slicer for sandwiches when I was 16 and I noped the fuck out when they tried to train me on it.