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Things like this (also reported several other places) take a special kind of stupidity. "Kyle Dubois and his parents claim teacher Thomas Kelley did not warn Dubois and other students of the dangers of the electrical demonstration cords in their electrical trades class"? Uh ... HELLO??? Have you spent your entire life UNDER A ROCK?!? I don't think any of my school teachers ever specifically warned me of the dangers of leaping off tall buildings, yet I somehow managed to make it through my teens without becoming a greasy red smear on a sidewalk somewhere. (Neither did I try to test my superpowers against speeding locomotives.)
As a friend elsewhere observed, "I don't think he's going to be able to convince a jury that he only got brain damage after electrocuting himself." Hell, my ten-year-old knows — from watching me — that any time you have no choice but to to work on live electrical components, especially anything with high voltage on it, you keep one hand behind your back whenever possible to minimize the risk of an electric shock across the chest.
It's not the teacher who totally blew his responsibilities on this one. It's the parents, for raising a teenager lacking in even the most basic concepts of self-preservation in the presence of modern technology (where "modern" refers to "any time in the last hundred years or so").
(And yes, I totally, shamelessly front-loaded the music on this one. Sometimes social commentary is required. I frequently worry, in light of incidents like this, that we are raising a generation too stupid to survive in our own civilization. The only question in my mind was the choice between this and Pink Floyd's Brain Damage.)
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My father didn’t teach me the hand-behind-the-back trick. I’ll give him a pass on that one, though: he taught me something which I believe is equivalently useful — that when dealing with not-known-dead wires, to think through the next two consequences of my actions before making any move whatsoever. It has served me well in lab environments.
In grad school I was serving as the project supervisor for an undergrad research project. It was a 5VDC thing involving a few ICs and a breadboard. The student involved let his workbench turn into a total rat’s nest of wires — some live, some not, some exposed, some not — and literally could not understand why I was riding him so badly about the mess.
After I told him, “any wire you don’t have a voltmeter attached to is at max EMF of anything in the system, any wire you don’t have an ammeter attached to is at max current of anything in the system,” his plea was, “sure, but it’s only 5VDC!”
At this point I showed him his DC power supply was plugged into the wall, meaning the system was assumed to be at 120VAC@15A. He still complained: that line went straight to the DC power supply, it couldn’t possibly be a problem…
Apparently, he’d never heard of the possibility of switching power supplies developing internal shorts.
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The missing course I am most upset about is American cultural history. Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan, Pecos Pete, the Appalachian and Ozark tales, we have a very rich mythology that is no longer taught. Lost in favor of some other culture's underpinnings. It is no wonder no one believes in America anymore.
My children have a much different educational experience. Around the dinner table. Homework is given. Answers are expected. There is rigor. Most of the time, we are laughing, but it is still education! My children are allowed to tell me no, and mean it (and face the consequences.)
How can you have the self confidence to help anyone if you don't know about where you came from? Learning all about them, and nothing about yourself is not an advantage. Accepting of everything is not a virtue. Some things should remain unacceptable. That is why we have prisons.