Today I am a battlefield commander, pacing the classroom in anticipation of giving the order to go over the top. But first I must brief my platoon on the dangers that lie ahead. “Right, kids, switch off those tablet computers and listen carefully. There will be no more virtual learning on my watch. The time has come for you to interface with the real world. To risk life, limb and eyesight in the pursuit of a practical education.”
Today’s learning will be up close and personal. Armed only with raw courage and a modicum of protective clothing, they will do battle with autumn’s weapons of ultimate destruction
With their minds smartly at attention, I explain that our Forces Project is a perilous one. There will be no tapping icons and watching electrons dance across a screen (the educational equivalent of using remotely controlled drones to deliver laser-guided death from an RAF base in Lincolnshire).
Today’s learning will be up close and personal. Armed only with raw courage and a modicum of protective clothing, they will do battle with autumn’s weapons of ultimate destruction.
I take out my carrier bag and empty its contents. Tens of shiny brown nuts roll around the floor. The reactions of the children are varied. They range from total confusion to utter disappointment. I ask if anyone knows what they are. Three failed attempts later, James tells me they’re conkers. He explains that their proper name is horse chestnuts and that, unlike sweet chestnuts, you can’t eat them because they’re poisonous.
Divide and conker
When I ask which of the children have played conkers before, the response is equally discouraging. A playground sport enjoyed by countless children during the 20th century is hanging by a thread in the 21st; battered into submission by the all-conquering microchip.
Gathering nuts in a damp wood and whacking them together can’t compete with a PlayStation Vita, while worries about developing RSI (repetitive swiping injury) are tiny compared with the threat of bruised knuckle syndrome.
But is the demise of conkers a sign of the times or are more sinister forces at work? I have it on good authority (a bloke in the pub) that there are those who would wrap such games in biodegradable lavatory paper and consign them to the composting toilet of history.
Our nanny state has teamed up with opportunistic litigators to deprive us of simple pleasures. So will conkers go the way of all the great character-building activities of the 20th century? The wearing of leg braces after contracting polio? Having your ringworm irradiated? Doing PE in your vest and pants? Not while I’m around it won’t.
The risk assessment is signed and the permission slips are gathered in. The children don their hard hats, their safety glasses and their leather gardening gauntlets, and take up arms. Let battle commence.
Overcoming the fear of causing injury by reckless teaching is a tough nut to crack. But someone has to do it. Someone has to laugh in the face of danger, scoff at cowardliness, put two fingers up to the grey merchants of health and safety, sneer at…“Oh my God! Daniel, stop eating that conker! Spit it out! Now!”
Steve Eddison teaches at Arbourthorne Community Primary School in Sheffield
