Rookie teachers took schoolkids up a dangerous summit

[Rolfe]

There was a case in Scotland where a German man went out on the hills with his two young children in winter, despite many people at the hotel he was staying in telling him not to go, that it wasn't an appropriate route for young children in winter, and that he hadn't left nearly early enough to complete the route. But he looked at the height and decided it was an afternoon stroll - he was used to much higher altitudes, but crucially much further south and with continental weather patterns, not coastal.

Fog rolled in off the Atlantic, he got completely lost (there were of course no signposts, as there are in Germany), one of the children broke an ankle, and by the end of it all the younger child, a girl, was dead.

He was charged with negligent homicide and found guilty, although I don't believe any penalty was imposed.

 

[Myriad]

The White Mountains in New Hampshire are famous for this. They’re tiny by world standards. Most of the.taller summits have.elevatons of about 1000-1200 meters above roadside trailheads, reached by steep hiking trails (no technical.climbing required) a few kilometers long. But the.weather can be wild, rapid hypothermia conditions of cold, wind, and rain even on summer days and happening with little warning. It can be a trap for the overconfident and underprepared. Over 140 deaths on Mt. Washington alone, albeit over many years. For comparison, about 200 have died on Everest.

 

[Puppycow]

OT. I'm told some people find left and right as obvious as up and down. Is this true?

I don't think it's as obvious as that, but if you drive a car, it's important to really know the difference automatically. It's easy to get confused if you go to a country where people drive on the opposite side from the one you grew up with.

 

[catsmate]

The only time a teacher tried to take us up a mountain was my differential equations professor. Which is odd now that I think about it.

I remember being with a group of physicists exploring the Burren.

 

[Rolfe]

I don't think it's as obvious as that, but if you drive a car, it's important to really know the difference automatically. It's easy to get confused if you go to a country where people drive on the opposite side from the one you grew up with.

I'm hopeless with left and right when it comes to the words. I just don't autimatically associate the words with the appropriate lateral direction, as I would automatically associate up and down with the appropriate vertical direction.

I've never had any trouble driving on the right when I have to. I don't use the word, I just switch into that mode.

 

[Puppycow]

I'm hopeless with left and right when it comes to the words.

One trick I used to use when I was younger is to imagine picking up a pencil. It's easy to remember that I am right-handed. The direction of the hand I pick the pencil up with is right and the opposite direction is left. Of course, this requires one to pause for a moment and think about it.

 

[Matthew Best]

Or "you write with your right and what's left is your left".

 

[Darat]

I'm hopeless with left and right when it comes to the words. I just don't autimatically associate the words with the appropriate lateral direction, as I would automatically associate up and down with the appropriate vertical direction.

I've never had any trouble driving on the right when I have to. I don't use the word, I just switch into that mode.

I know what you mean - if someone shouted "look up" without any apparent thought I'd immediately look up. If they shouted "look right" it seems as if I have to work that out, "I write with my right, scribble in the air.. ah look that way!"

 

[Vixen]

TEACHER LEADING GROUP: Ok, children, we need to quickly turn right as I have just noticed from looking up from my smart phone location that actually there is a sharp descent on the left -

Children...?

CHILDREN!!!???


Silly me, I meant turn left immediately. Oh dear. Children, are you all right down there?

 

[Rolfe]

I know all the tricks. When I was a kid it was a piano keyboard and which hand had the low notes and which the high ones. It doesn't take me long to work it out.

Darat is right. I'm talking about the instinctive response to the words, without needing any thought at all. Apparently some people, and not an insignificant number either, are as instinctive with left and right as they are with up and down.

 

[sophia8]

One trick I used to use when I was younger is to imagine picking up a pencil. It's easy to remember that I am right-handed. The direction of the hand I pick the pencil up with is right and the opposite direction is left. Of course, this requires one to pause for a moment and think about it.

Similar to what I do every time I need to know where left or right is. I recite to myself "Right hand, writing hand".
Don't ever ask me to navigate. Or give you directions.

 

[Darat]

Similar to what I do every time I need to know where left or right is. I recite to myself "Right hand, writing hand".
Don't ever ask me to navigate. Or give you directions.

I have no sense of directions and for some reason when someone gives me directions, it's like the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons, nonsensical noise!

 

[jimbob]

It's damn near impossible to set out on a UK school trip without a written 'risk assessment' that's stored in the school records. People need to be prosecuted over this jaunt.

Exactly.

It was known about and since the Lyme Bay canoeing disaster in the early 1990s, adventurous training has been more heavily-regulated.

Knowing that mountain, And having been up it in winter conditions, they were very lucky.

And ignorance is no defence, any more than if I decided that (um) chainsaw-slacklining was a good activity and assessed the risks as hearing damage from the noise of the chainsaws.

 

[mgidm86]

Actually the precipitous drop was on our left. I typed without checking against my actual hands.

OT. I'm told some people find left and right as obvious as up and down. Is this true?

I'm hopeless with left and right when it comes to the words. I just don't autimatically associate the words with the appropriate lateral direction, as I would automatically associate up and down with the appropriate vertical direction.

I've never had any trouble driving on the right when I have to. I don't use the word, I just switch into that mode.

I know what you mean - if someone shouted "look up" without any apparent thought I'd immediately look up. If they shouted "look right" it seems as if I have to work that out, "I write with my right, scribble in the air.. ah look that way!"

That's interesting, I'd never heard of this. If this is a widespread thing it would explain a lot. I don't have to think at all about which direction is which when hearing the words, it's ingrained in me.

It must have something to do with cat avatars

Edit: Wait I see there are more of you here. Interesting.

 

[bruto]

It might be a personality thing. I'm pretty verbal, and think in terms of up,down, left, right, east, west, and so forth. If you draw it or spell it I'll probably understand it. Other people see able to envision things other ways.

I suspect one of the worst consequences of the digital era is that people will no longer know how to orient themselves as if standing on a clock face.