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Dulling down?
By KENT FISCHER © St. Petersburg Times, published January 24, 1999 The simple experiment has long been a staple of high school biology classes. Students scrape saliva from inside their mouths and plop it on a slide. Under a microscope, it teems with their own living cells. For thousands of students, this basic experiment is their first occasion to peer into a microscope. But the experiment is now banned in most Florida schools. With all that spit out in the open, school officials fear a student might get AIDS or hepatitis from a classmate. As far as anyone knows, it's never happened. But if it did, school officials say this much is certain: The student was unnecessarily put at risk, and the school's liability would be enormous. That's enough to force the experiment out. Aside from science teachers, the experiment's exile has gone practically unnoticed. But to some, it's an unmistakable example of how schools today cower before the specter of legal liability. "That experiment has been in biology textbooks for decades," said Linda Dale, a biology teacher at Gulf High School in New Port Richey. "It's disappointing that people are that scared." To protect students from harm -- and themselves from lawsuits -- most schools have virtually rid themselves of anything that might explode, infect, injure or stigmatize. The result, some teachers say, is a sterile curriculum quickly becoming devoid of the most exciting projects. Hot plates replace gas Bunsen burners in middle school science labs. Teeter-totters and swings are banished from elementary school playgrounds. In Pasco County, asthmatic students are protected by a "no fur, no feathers, no reptiles" rule, which effectively bars animals from the classroom -- though fish are still considered safe. Chemistry experiments that might explode or scald are banned. "A lot of the things we do today are very bland," said Margaret Peek, head of Gulf High's science department. "A lot of the fun stuff we don't do anymore." Sometimes, the fun stuff requires a paper trail. Cynthia Elkhouly, a senior at Lakewood High in St. Petersburg, had an idea this school year for the Pinellas school district's science fair. Can listening to classical music increase your short-term memory? To find out, she proposed testing her classmates. It was more trouble than it was worth. The science fair has strict rules about experiments using "human test subjects," so Cynthia's idea first had to be approved by her teacher, the school's principal and two doctors. Then, all 39 "test subjects" had to sign waivers promising not to sue if the experiment somehow went haywire. "They don't make any exceptions," said Cynthia, an honors student headed to the University of Florida in the fall. "You end up spending all your time on this tedious paperwork. It takes the fun out of it." The rules are identical to international standards meant to prevent ghastly experiments on unwitting subjects. But all Cynthia wanted to do was to play some Mozart and quiz her classmates. Schools do have a point. About once a day, somebody threatens to sue the Hillsborough County school district, said School Board attorney Crosby Few. The claims range from trip-and-fall negligence suits to harassment to disputes over educational services. "Twenty years ago, (an accident) was considered an accident," Few said. "Now, they try to make a negligence claim out of it. There are an awful lot of attorneys out there that don't have enough work and will take a frivolous lawsuit." School officials in charge of fighting such claims say the best, and cheapest, defense is to prevent accidents, though preventive measures can cost districts hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. In addition to legal fees, schools spend thousands on safety equipment, staff training and risk management. Many of those costs are unavoidable, however, because state or federal laws mandate them. Some of the changes have come outside the classroom, on the once rough-and-tumble playground. Lillian Davis, principal of Hillsborough's Palm River Elementary School, remembers years ago when a child fell off the monkey bars and broke her arm. The bars were removed, but that accident would not occur today because new rules strictly limit the types of playground equipment allowed. "A lot of the things we remember as kids, swings and teeter-totters, are a thing of the past," Davis said. "Even balance beams made out of wood are prohibited, because . . . wood deteriorates so fast and can cause splinters and scrapes." Inside the classroom, fears mean teachers must eliminate lessons if there is the slightest hint of danger. In Pasco, students dissecting frogs now use scissors, because schools don't want teens wielding razor-sharp scalpels. Pasco also has that no-animals rule, though Pinellas and Hillsborough do not. David Kraemer, a marine biology teacher at Jefferson High School in Tampa, has used animals in his classroom for 28 years. He has four parakeets, 10 snakes and lots of mice and lab rats. He said he couldn't imagine getting rid of them simply to avoid a potential lawsuit. "It really brings the lesson to a different level," he said. "When you take that snake out, you have the attention of the entire class." Without such extras, some teachers fear they're losing the whiz-bang experiments that once captivated students and sparked interest in the sciences. "They've taken all the fun out of science," says Tom Dale, a physics teacher at Gulf High. "They've taken away everything that goes "boom!' " But administrators say teachers don't have to blow things up to catch students' attention. There are plenty of interesting experiments that don't send debris flying across the classroom, they argue. "We're trying to stay away from the dangerous," said Jay Feliciani, Pasco's supervisor of science curriculum. "The risk is always the bottom line. Does the educational value outweigh the risk? When it comes to someone's health, you can never be too pro-active." Robert Dull, science department chairman at Palm Harbor University High School, agrees. He said many changes result from new technology -- such as digital thermometers replacing mercury ones -- not fear of lawsuits. Such changes don't make lessons less interesting, he said, they make them safer. "Years ago we used to do lances of blood and tissue cultures, now we don't do anything with human tissue at all," Dull said. ". . . Really, it's just because we know better." No teacher wants to cause students harm, but many lament that fear affects so much. Many elementary school teachers don't give scared or scraped students reassuring hugs. They worry it will be misconstrued as molestation. In Hernando County, middle school teacher Joseph Gatti spent two years in teaching exile after being accused of molesting students. He was later cleared of those charges. But in the wake of the case, school officials there tell teachers not to touch students unless it's an emergency. "Just as a gesture of approval or as a gesture just to be friendly, we advise against it," said Edd Poore, Hernando's personnel director. In Citrus County, teachers are even warned to be careful how they touch students when breaking up fights, said assistant superintendent David Hickey. Teachers say their fears extend beyond misconstrued touching. They also have to be careful not to offend a student, even accidentally. Teachers guard against allowing other students to sneak a peek at another's grades when passing back homework. And they say it's hard to chastise a lazy student. "It can be construed as harassment," said Doug Stobbs, a Gulf High biology teacher. The changing times have reached all the way to the Supreme Court. A fifth-grade Georgia girl sued her school for sexual harassment after administrators failed to stop a 10-year-old boy from continually teasing her, prompting Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to remark: "Little boys tease little girls. Is every one of these cases going to lead to some kind of lawsuit?" Stobbs says that school districts "are so fearful of litigation that they no longer have the backbone to stand up to parents or students who are flat wrong." Few, the Hillsborough attorney, said teachers shouldn't be so afraid. "This shouldn't interrupt teaching," he said. "We defend teachers." Regardless, several teachers said they often feel on their own. And they dislike defending themselves over what they see as perfectly reasonable actions. Tom Dale looks at it this way: "Teaching is a great, glorious job -- when they let me do it."
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