Your Comments: Does the UK education system sufficiently encourage innovation?
No
Teachers play it safe: health and safety insists they should play it safe, and negligence lawyers kick them if they don't. Meanwhile we are oblivious to the key fact that the stulification of conformity is a greater risk than any of the apparent risks we try to avoid.
N P G Davies
1 February 2006
No
Why isnt Health and Nutrition a compulsory subject in the National Curriculum?? We are not taught how to be healthy at school, college or at university. We are taught how to use a Bunsen Burner but not how to provide ourselves with the best possible diets or lifestyles.
Sarah Herbert
1 February 2006
No
I worked in Education all my working life as a teacher, head and early years inspector and I know it doesn't!
Mary Heath
23 January 2006
Previous vote question: "Is judging risk a rational matter?"
No
Probability is not an objective idea, therefore risk can not be rational. We can make good subjective judgements.
Ben Taylor
Probability is not an objective idea, therefore risk can not be rational. We can make good subjective judgements.
No
It is fairly impossible to ascertain all the facts in any given situation. I rely rightly or otherwise on my intuitive reasoning.
Bill Ford
11 October 2005
No
It clearly depends on your definition of of 'rational', I have a lot of sympathy with John Reid's description of a single parent on benefits who chooses to smoke. Some may say that she is not being rational when 'objectively' she is increasing her risk of heart disease/cancer by smoking. However from her point of view the benefits of smoking may outweigh her equally rational view of her life chances. Where other factors - lack of income, poor housing, lack of support - actually present greater immediate risks to her than her smoking. So.... the idea rational assessment of riks implies a universal objectivity that I do not feel applies to the real world and tends to be that defined by public health professionals.
Mark Gamsu
8 October 2005
Yes
Risk is mathematical and inherently logical. It may also involve fear, apprehension, etcetera, which is the emotional bit. This may come under the rubric of 'emotional intelligence' which, if in proportion, I would not expect to significantly distort rationalility. However, the human condition is often frail and unpredictable and so I would admit that this may not always be the case.
Dr. Robert Spanswick
10 July 2005
Yes
Of couse you can make a rational estimation of risk.
Malcolm Campbell
30 June 2005
No
For individual to judge what is a risk, I think we underestimate how may factors interplay in that decision. Rationality is in the eye of the beholder.
Brian Edwards
24 June 2005
No
While most people would probably consider themselves 'rational', in truth we are governed by emotions, prejudices and other 'irrational' states of being. 'Rational' risk-taking occurs far less than its 'irrational' twin.
Dave
16 June 2005
