Safety Education

I was once invited to do a convention program on safety education for young children.  After coming up blank with a good approach, I asked my second graders several questions. "What does it mean to be educated in math?"  They replied you could add, subtract, multiply, divide etc.  I then asked the same question for reading and they had good answers for this questions also.  Then I asked them what it meant to be educated in safety, and they immediately responded with a list of don'ts, i.e., don't throw stones, don't walk in the street, don't go down the slide backwards, etc., until one boy said "Don't climb trees".  The boy sitting next to him immediately said, "Why not.  I do it all the time", to which the first boy responded, "You might fall out of the tree".  "No I won't" was the reply, so I asked him "Why Not"?  The young boy said he would hold on tight, not step on dead branches, climb slowly etc.  The thought immediately came to mind that perhaps safety education wasn't don't do, but rather, learn how to.  Don't swim because you may drown becomes learn how to swim so you don't drown.  The classic one for parents is "Don't run, you might fall".  How about teaching children how to be good runners so they won't fall.  Learning "how to" develops a more physically educated child.  Teach them to ride their bikes, to ice skate, to ski, to swim, to do a variety of sports that will enhance their movement capability and contribute to that built in safety device that all children need in order to enjoy being physically active and stay safe while doing so.   Our motto becomes "learn how to" not "don't do".  Food for thought.