I think demonstrating to kids how to make a “cool light show” with matches and gasoline is probably one of the reasons that you and your fire fighter freinds are necessary.
Well I’ll suggest that you’re taking it a little out of context. It’s not like I’m showing kids how to create IED’s. We are demonstrating the differences between different hydrocarbons. In the process of giving a “Chemistry of Fire” education we also sneak in our fire safety messages. I’ve received nothing but positive comments from the teachers and parents. Our City has been doing this program for about 20 years and we have very few juvenille fire starter issues. We manage to get into every middle school in our City and I spend 3 days with the kids going over this curriculum during their Science class. It might be a poor analogy (you decide) but teaching sex-ed in PE class doesn’t necessarily make kids pregnant. Oh or how’s this one, spoons don’t make Oprah fat. As a matter of fact one of the questions I ask the kids when we start out is “Who has ever used a lighter and lit up an aerosol spray? WD-40, Axe body spray, etc.” The answer by show of hands at the 8th grade level is consistently at or near 100 percent. I like to show the kids why they should not do this. This is done through our demo’s and some video’s, which are pretty heart-wrenching.
The way I’ve looked at it is if I can get through to these kids not to use gasoline to start campfires, put it into squirt guns and light the stream or any number of other crazy stunts, that’s one of the big goals. Kerosene is much safer for starting camp fires by the way.