How Old Should Children Be Before You Teach Them to Make Pipe Bombs?

According to a report in the Wednesday edition of the Lübecker Nachrichten newspaper, [a] 39-year-old teacher, who has not been named, made gunpowder together with his students who then filled pipes with the explosive. The bombs were later detonated on a nearby heath, using sparklers as detonators. The newspaper reported that the teacher built bombs with classes of fifth-grade students between 2009 and 2011. _Spiegel

The teacher in question taught fifth-grade students at a Waldorf school in Lubeck, Germany.

Here is more about Waldorf education:

The central focus for the Waldorf teacher is the development of that essence in every person that is independent of external appearance, by instilling in his/her pupils an understanding of and appreciation for their background and place in the world, not primarily as members of any specific nation, ethnic group or race, but as members of humanity and world citizens. _WaldorfAnswers

After skimming the Waldorf Answers website, I confess that I was unable to find a reference to the proper age for teaching children to make pipe bombs.

Spiegel: Lubeck, Germany
Both Waldorf and Montessori schools are oriented toward a more "hands-on" and experimental / experiential approach to education, than is the case for a conventional western education. This is also the case for the very daring curriculum devised by John David Garcia.
Full Garcia early childhood curriculum here.

Knowledge is power. Competence is power. Creativity is power. Clear discernment of reality is power. The best educational approaches seek to instill in students not only knowledge, but competence, creativity, and discernment. Successful graduates of such programs are likely to be quite powerful -- and quite dangerous to any given established order. The more petty and corrupt the established order, the greater danger to the establishment are well-educated young people.

In the age of radical religious terrorism (originating principally within Islam at this time), it may seem outlandish for a teacher to help students make pipe bombs. But if the basic lessons of chemistry, physics, engineering, safety, and demolition were considered valid lessons to teach to a child -- at what age would it be appropriate?

"No syllabus in the world contains something like this," the mother of one of the students told the newspaper. She said that when the bombs were detonated, the students were only 30 meters (100 feet) away and were not wearing protective glasses or ear protectors. "The explosion was so powerful that the children felt the shockwave in their guts," she said. There were apparently no cases of injuries, however.

A spokesman for the Lübeck public prosecutors office confirmed to the newspaper that an investigation was being conducted into the case, on suspicion that the teacher had committed an offense against Germany's law on the use of explosives. If the teacher is convicted, he could face a fine or up to three years in prison.

Hans Peter Scherer, the head of the association that runs the private Waldorf school, also confirmed the investigation but said that the teacher "continues to enjoy the trust" of the management and the parents. _Spiegel

It is the opinion of Al Fin educational theorists and child psychologists that children should be taught many advanced skills from the earliest ages of pre-school and school. Among those subjects would be food growing and preparation, basic shelter construction, basic survival skills of orienteering, firemaking, survival foods, finding water, signaling for help etc, basic individual and group self-defense, and more.

On the topic of edged weapons, firearms, archery, and explosives, experts of the Al Fin Institute of Advanced Childhood Educational Studies agree that all children of sound and stable mind should be taught these deadly skills. The main point of contention among these luminaries is the exact age when children should become competent at such dangerous practises. All are agreed on the point that such skills should only be taught within a philosophical matrix of the limits of and strict non-initiation of violence, using the best safety precautions available.

A well-educated child is a dangerous child. While this concept seems quite foreign to modern psychologically neotenous and sheltered societies, it is in fact transparently obvious and necessary to anyone who expects humans to progress to the next level.

More on this concept, and how it relates to the much needed revival of the concept of multiple "rites of passage of childhood" later.