one step beyond

Dear Marianne,

The daughter of a friend of mine has been isolated from the rest of the school by her headmaster, for having black and white hair. Why would he do that? Perhaps he thinks that two tone hair is catching, perhaps he thinks that it will return to brown if she is left alone long enough, perhaps he is keen on apartheid; well obviously he is keen on apartheid, that's what he's practising.

What worries me most about this is that he found the time to bother his arse. Surely he has a list of things to do as long as his arm, with items such as budgets, timetables, interfering parents, meetings with investors... blah blah blah. Not anything directly related to education or children of course, you're not expected to educate anyone at school anymore, process them for exams - yes, enlighten - nope. So perhaps I left something crucial off the headmaster's list: humiliating children to stamp out individualism. How can coloured hair be a problem for a school, is it because it is a posh Kent school and the headmaster has the time and the inclination to get in-bloody-volved. I think yes - A* for me.
I know that when our big kids were at a seriously stretched inner city school in London their expereince and the experience of the head teacher were coloured by issues other than hair...colour.
A sample of the average morning at Pakebourne Junior School:
Teacher: "Hello children I am your supply teacher for the day. Please stop hitting the wall with your head that boy - stay away from the broken windows that girl!"

School secretary: "Hello supply teacher from New Zealand here is the new girl for your class (that makes 35 children)she is from Turkey she has no English, and she is scared."

Headteacher: "I cannot leave this part of the building to meet with you since the father of Brian in year three wants to stab me."

Stepmother: "Have a nice day Stan."

Stan: "Arsenal have signed Thierry Henry!"

They had a great time, and sometimes a rubbish time, but nobody went for them because they had the wrong hair or wrong uniform, because there was no uniform and hair was, well...hair. Nobody had time to worry about that sort of thing, because half of the kids didn't speak English, half had parents who weren't quite there for them, half were too poor to eat properly, half had stories from their home countries so awful you wouldn't tell to an adult, and half were...oh hang on a minute, I got unclassified for my O level maths.

Anyway the point is that you don't need league tables, or a uniform to learn about the world, or one tone hair, or a straight back. You do need happy and contented children supported by happy and contented teachers and happy contented parents. You need music, and the arts, you need physical activity, you need children out of the classroom. We can do this as a country, can't we, we can be modern, use computers, educate our children in everything from osmosis, to algebra, from the Impressionists to Badly Drawn Boy and web site design to hockey. We can make learning enjoyable and relaxed, taught in classes of no more than fifteen children by enthusiastic well paid teachers. A broad and thorough education for a broad and modern society.

And then I woke up and it was all a dream.

Meanwhile, I thought you might like to know that Becky has just had her hair coloured red and it does not seem to have affected her ability to read and write, listen, talk and learn stuff. So with a scientific study of one child, I can reveal that my findings prove there is no correlation between hair colour and the ability to learn. However, if you attend a GOOD school in Kent and have coloured hair, there is a 98% chance that your headteacher will sit you in a room on your own for a week, where you have a 100% chance of learning nuffink.

Rx