Richard Clark wrote in
:

....
The second take-home here seems to be, if you wish to teach someone
how to perform a task, or build a project, you shouldn't do it with
negative examples without being encyclopedic to completion (which
invites boredom).

Richard,

That same thought occurred to me on first reading it. Teaching what not
to do has its place, but it 'dumbs down' the learner.

Explaining the concepts, and how to use them imparts empowering knowledge
more than rote learning of negative Rules of Thumb.

Still, people keep telling me that that is all old world thinking, today
you train (instead of educate) people to specific and narrow tasks, and
competency for immediate tasks (train to the need) is more important than
knowledge of principles and concepts.

I have quals to opearate a fork lift. One of the questions I was asked
for assessment was "name six places that you should not park a fork
lift". Of course, one cannot just nominate any 6 places that would be
inappropriate, it MUST be THE six places on the assessor's list. One of
them is "on a railway track". So, rather than training people to identify
hazards, and not park the fork lift in a hazardous place or way,
"competent people" know the rule to not park the fork lift on a railway
track. No doubt accident / incident driven training... a negative driver.
(I will leave you to think about 5 other stupid places to park a fork
lift!)

Owen