Social Studies Lesson: Safety in the home and school

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Meaning of Safety

Safety has to do with making sure that lives and property are secured. This will ensure good health and orderliness in our environments. Therefore, safety is a condition of being safe or free from risk or danger. It is the reduction in the rate at which human beings are involved in accidents that could take away their lives, damage their property, and disrupt their daily business activities.

Safety in our environment involves taking every precaution to make sure that the environment is safe for habitation. Safety devices are everywhere in our society, but most people neglect and ignore them. They tend to take for granted certain things to be harmless; but in actual fact, those things are very harmful. Therefore, there is a need to emphasize the safety precaution needed in everything in our environment. For example, the way we dump refuse without using the incinerator can cause illness. The habit of moving around in our environment with feet unprotected is one that needs to be discouraged.

Need for safety

Some reasons why there is a need for safety in our environment are:

1. Need to safeguard life.
2. Need to sustain our environment
3. Need to preserve the beauty of our
   environment.
4. Need for the safety of our property (v) Need to reduce or even avoid risk
5. Need for progress.
6. Reduction of health-related risks.

Safety measures in the home

To prevent home accidents, the under- listed measures need to be known by children, as their awareness of them will help minimize or reduce home accidents.
They include:

1. Being careful in all our activities at home (the major preventive measure).
2. Children should not be allowed to
   play with matches and other materials that can set fire to the house. Adults, on their part, should and also be careful in handling these materials. The use of candles should be discouraged.
3. Drugs and other chemicals like bleach, etc. should be kept out of the reach of children. They should be clearly labelled for easy identification by adults in the homes.
4. Provision of enough ventilation in our home to avoid suffocation.
5. Our home environment should be kept clean and safe from dangerous objects such as sharp things, like razors, nails, etc. Children should not
   be allowed to play with sharp objects.
6. The floors of our houses should be made to have friction as we tread on it; and any water on the floor should be dried up immediately to avoid making the floor slippery. Our staircases should be made to have enough light and broken hand-rails repaired.
7. Electrical appliances with naked or exposed wire should not be used. Children and adults should not use electrical objects they can not operate.

Safety in School

1. First Aid Box or Kit should be available in the school.
2. There should be proper positioning of classrooms, laboratories, play- ground or field, school farm, work- shops, toilets, etc.
3. In laboratories, dangerous chemicals should be kept in such a way that students should not get free access to them, which should be possibly kept in locked cupboards. Laboratory attendants should not give the students access to them unless they are instructed to do so. Good quality materials should be used to construct the school toilet, and preferrably the water system type.
4. Water should be made available, and tanks well covered, and water preferrably distributed through pipes/taps.
5. Trees that can be climbed easily by students should not be planted.
6. Students should be carefully supervised during practical lessons that involve the use of tools or equipment.

Safety Measures in the Workplace

Every job has its peculiar occupational hazards. Safety precautions in a work place helps to prevent accidents and promote the health of workers or employees. Safety precautions in a work place depends on the nature or kind of job done by the employees. Some of the safety precautions in a workplace include:

1. Avoiding the use of alcohol or drugs that could distract the attention of workers.
2. Provision of First Aid boxes in case of emergency.
3. In some work places, there is a need for the use of protective handgloves, boots, sunshade, etc.
4. Some workplaces provide free or subsidized medical treatment to sick workers.
5. In most workplaces, fire extinguishers should be provided.
6. There should be co-operation between the employer (authority) and the employees (workers). This will give room for a safe working environment.
7. There should be proper supervision of workers in all departments.
   

Revision Exercises

1. What do you understand by the
   term "Safety"?
2. Mention five (5) things we can do to make sure that our homes are safe.
3. State measures that should be taken to ensure safety at school.
4. List 3 safety measures in the workplace.

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