Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/02/27/teacher-has-students-swordfight.html
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So to clarify, this was not a fencing class?
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I would have been so, so excited at 16 to be able to mess around with swords at school. Teachers should probably practice better judgement than their students, though. WTF was she thinking would happen when kids start swinging sharpened swords at each other?
@Brainspore It was chemistry class. No idea.
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No shit. I can’t even begin to imagine what this teacher was thinking. I mean, even if nothing happened, some kid is going to tell a parent or another student not in this class that they were sword fighting with real swords. There was zero chance the school wasn’t going to find out eventually. Poor judgment doesn’t even begin to describe this.
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Speaking as a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, let me please just say
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It shows how incredibly messed up things are, that I am actually relieved there were actual weapons involved; at first glance, my mind conjured the old slang meaning of that term.
*shudderz
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If they’re were a republican candidate they would have got a boost in the polls from their supporters.
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Once again, the world has gone mad and humanity has done a thing that makes me scream, “Why would anyone EVER think this was a good idea?” Once again, there is no apparent explanation beyond “human brains work so radically differently from each other that we may as well all be different species and growing up in the same civilization under the same rules somehow makes no difference.”
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As a stage combat instructor and an erstwhile fencer, what they were doing in class was absolutely unsafe, regardless of if either of those weapons had a sharp edge. Even a dull sword is still a force multiplier that concentrates force in a small area, whether it is the dull edge or the end.
For sport fencing, you use flexible weapons with blunt points, plus puncture rated protective gear.
There are various styles of “Historical” fencing competition that use heaver but still dull swords with blunt ends, such as various “HEMA” competitions, that also use a full range of protective head, hand and body protection.
For stage combat, actor combatants use “real” metal but dull swords and are trained with specific safe moves and timed choreography designed to look like the defender just made the needed parries, but are actually a precise cooperative dance. And the moves that could be dangerous if done wrong use reverse timing - for instance, a for big horizontal slash that could hurt the defender if they don’t get out of the way in time works backwards, where the attack is preped (the back swing) but not released until the defender has already leaped out of distance, but performed in a way that makes it look like a narrow escape.
Those kids were just fucking around with actual swords without anything to make it safe. and no idea what they are doing - they could have been stabbed in the face, eye, abdomen - anywhere - and of course, the hands and wrist. It could have been even worse than what happened. No excuse for the teacher. I feel bad for the young woman who was injured, and this is one of those instances where a lawsuit is justified.
That kind of rash behavior by the teacher and the subsequent injury and law suit will make it harder to do safe, professionally supervised and instructed sport fencing and stage combat in schools 
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I can’t think of a tradition/hobby/sport using swords, especially live steel, that doesn’t stress safety.
So where did this rando come from?
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I have no doubt that multiple “live steel no armour, unless you’re a coward” groups have started over the years. I wouldn’t imagine that any of them lasted very long for some reason.
Survivorship bias on multiple levels.
SCA armour standards, for heavy, rapier, or combat archery, are strict for a reason. Fighting someone is no fun unless you can both get up and have a beverage of your choice together afterwards.
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We should all be thankful the teacher only used live swords rather than bringing copies of Gender Queer or Maus into the classroom.
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Live by the sword and die by the sword
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Nuh, it wasn’t guns.
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How is risk of mutilation or actual death of minors less messed up than minors doing public sex stuff?
Snarky snark is snarky. That’s all.
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