Criticism
There has been a negative response to Issue 6 - Hidden Horrors in the Home in the magazine adaption of the book series. The article named "Loony Lab" in this Horrible Science Collection had a section called "Grow your own manky microbes". A compainant, a biology teacher and parent, described it as "irresponsible in the extreme". A plastic petri dish and sachet of agar powder are provided as a ’free gifts’, and children are encouraged to sample areas which may harbour disease-causing organisms (pathogens), such as a toilet handle, a dog's ear, or a "bogey". Under certain circumstances, contact with these substances is potentially life-theatening. The complainant added "The potential for real harm is jaw-dropping. Even in school, under supervision of trained staff, we would not be allowed to do much of what the article suggests, namely for health and safety reasons. How can they be sure that every child will follow even the meagre and woefully inadequate safety advice given?" .
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Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)