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[Dwarf4Explosives]

If the new version is save-compatible, of course. However, if you can't stop Aban from stressing out, and he goes beserk, I want to see the rampage. Depending on whether he goes beserk before you can transfer him or not, he's either going to get turned into a pile of Dwarf Grease or he's going to kill off most of your normal citizenry.

[Staalo]

He's not quite there yet but I'll move to .40.24 as soon as either Dwarf Therapist or DFHack updates. I'm hopeful that it'll also help with the goblin problem. Right now Aban is chilling with the rest of the stressed cripples in the Asylum.

Meanwhile the rest of the class continue their intensive training with Fimshel the bronze colossus. The lessons are getting bloodier each time; I assume old injuries slow students down and make dodging harder. In the last lecture the big guy managed to rip a llama wool sock from one of the students and used it to deal devastating blows to all sides. I don't know how that works but that sock put four to hospital care after one lesson. It hit Fath to left leg so hard that a splint flew off from his right leg, leaving him with both legs broken.

I may have to take a healing break from colossus wrestling to prevent student deaths. They've been very lucky to make it this far.

Other thing I've noticed that some students tend to hang back during the lessons and aren't gaining anything from them. This might be a bug or a personality issue but this kind of timidity has to be dealt with somehow.

[Sadrice]

Perhaps you could get better results from smaller class sizes with more one on one time with a less intimidating and more personable professor. 

If you put them in a smaller room, with less students per instructor, there might be less opportunity to shirk on learning.  Something  touch less hardcore than a bronze collosus might reduce injuries (goblins would be nice).  I don't suppose you have access to necromancy?  Something without a grasp tag would be incapable of acquiring makeshift weapons.  Zombie hair works well.  It is more or less harmless, hard to kill, can't grasp, and scares the bejeezus out of just about everyone.

[Staalo]

I'd very much like to have some zombies but I have to work what I've got. Since the students have already killed everything else all I've got is the colossus and some goblins. The students wont touch the goblins for some reason; this might be either due to a bug or just disdain towards mere puny goblins. Maybe I can use goblins again after I migrate to .40.24.

[Falconbridge]

of course, reusing the same teacher over and over is predictably increasingly deadly, as the teacher also learns from each successive lesson.
might be safer to just kill then or keep them for the circus after a few use.

[Staalo]

Bronze colossuses can't learn, so they're safe at least in that sense. That and their relative invulnerability makes them ideal training partners... provided that the trainees are tough enough to start with.

[Archereon]

Bronze colossuses can't learn, so they're safe at least in that sense. That and their relative invulnerability makes them ideal training partners... provided that the trainees are tough enough to start with.

An ideal training partner would have been a 0.34 sponge, since they were completely immortal prior to pulping.

Oh, and as far as getting zombies goes, 0.40.24 supposedly fixes the inevitable crash that ensues when you unretire a fortress after playing an adventurer. If there's even one tower in your world, you could go yoink the slab to get a necromancer.

If you do it as a member of your fortress, you should be able to safely retire him in your fort, and have him as a controllable dwarf. Note that while zombies raised by necromancers in world-gen/offscreen in post-gen theoretically share their master's allegiances (there's been multiple cases of necromancer sieges arriving with living allies and the zombies leaving them be), zombies raised on screen are still opposed to life, meaning they'll attack your students just fine. Of course, undead are absurdly powerful in 0.40, so be careful if you try this.

[Staalo]

I thought about giant sponges in that regard but they're not that immortal anymore in this version, and in addition I guess they require water to survive. That would have made the arena construction somewhat challenging.
The adventurer necromancer idea sounds intriguing, if a bit time consuming. I'll have to do that in some future fort.

I have been doing some individual student fights with some suitably dangerous critters that happened to wander into my cavern cage traps. My suspicions were confirmed: there are two students who will not fight anything thrown at them. They'll simply run away from enemies shouting "I must withdraw!" indefinitely. They do gain Discipline though, but that doesn't help with the problem.

One of the timid ones, Olon Razormatches, has the trait "Tends to avoid any physical confrontations" which may explain the reluctance but Èzum Tonecopper, the other one, doesn't have anything that might explain it. All the other students have engaged combat eventually, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

[Max™]

I have this weird feeling that it has been suggested, but it hit me suddenly
"we need to take the dwarven child care thread...

...and push it into the bacon like a pro thread!
"

[Staalo]

Zombie bacon made by child labor? Now that's an idea!

[Dwarf4Explosives]

It has been suggested. The use of necromancers to provide training dummies were already discussed, and on this page, too.
_{I've got the weirdest feeling that I'm missing some sarcasm here.}

[Max™]

I meant the patrick "take this and push it there" thing hit me, shoulda clarified that better probably.

[Chevaleresse]

If we wanted to test the effects of various personality traits, you could make a race of modified arena dwarves with various castes possessing fixed personalities.

[King_of_Baboons]

Guys,do we have todo the tests on vanilla or are mods allowed?Maybe a healing syndrome or a friendly but indestructible monster may help.Or even the use of dfhack?It isn't a legit way of doing it but can be extremely helpful

[Sadrice]

Helpful for experimentation, certainly (modified dwarves with predictable personality traits were just mentioned in the reply before yours), but it can't really be counted as a success of Dwarven Childcare unless it can be replicated in vanilla, although it could certainly prove to be an advance in dwarven science.  You could use dwarves with modified personality much like knockout mice (and other organisms) are used in modern genetics.  What would happen if they had 0 in this personality trait?  Or 100?  Which is preferable for military use, specifically in dwarven childcare?  Is some point in between preferable to either extreme?  Does the trait even matter? 

There's a lot of experimentation to be done, and modding is probably the best way to do it.  Guessing what personality traits do in dwarves with all traits randomized would require large sample size and some nasty statistics.  Doing it with modified dwarves, varying one trait while keeping all others constant, would make effects much easier to interpret, requiring less statistics of a less nasty variety.