I attended a one-day seminar on occupational hazards. The chief guest for the programme was Secretary for the Labour Ministry of the state government. In his address, he talked about various safety issues and finally he came to the subject of safety education. He advised the organizers of the event to coordinate with his senior staff and also of education department to introduce safety subject from school level onwards. He promised to talk to the secretaries of other departments for work in this direction. A noble promise indeed.
I never studied about safety, accident prevention, etc in my entire period of education. When I joined in the job, safety was touched upon during the training but there was no separte paper. Now for last few years, I am seeing that my children are having a chapter on road safety and environment protection. My juniors in the organization are having separte papers in their training programme on industrial safety and environment protection and I am taking classes for them on industrial safety. Really, a good development in our organization. Without studying safety subject, people are not aware of importance of safety and its benefits to the organizations.
In internet, we do have access to lot of information on safety, can see thousands of videos on selected topics. I feel that these videos as appropriate should be shown to children from high school level onwards and are discussed by teachers. At college level, videos on accidents (particularly those of CSB, WORKSAFEBC, HSE, etc) are to be shown and students should be asked to comeout with their own ideas and suggestions for preventing such accidents including design changes. US Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is doing a great service to the world and they even send DVDs of videos free of cost whichever part of the world you are.
The pass mark for safety subject should be atleast same as that for other papers and it should be compulsory subject and not an optional subject.
If a person does not study about safety during his education years, then he will not understand the importance of safety in his employment years and he will be moulded by his workplace seniors in such a way that safety will not a priority to say the least. He may even think that safety procedures are an obstruction to his career growth, to his bonuses, etc till he lands in an accident or accident case depending upon his level of employment. I found this type of attitude when I discussed with my fellow safety professionals from various industries and the story is same. Not many care for safety or advise of safety professionals.
Therefore introduction of safety subject from school level is VERY IMPORTANT and should be continued upto degree level and specializations can be introduced at post graduation level.