skirtcafe.org

A 12-year-old boy has gone to school dressed in a skirt to protest against 'discriminatory' rules which ban boys from wearing shorts.

Chris Whitehead wore a girls' knee-length skirt to classes at Impington Village College, near Cambridge.

Chris is protesting against a school uniform policy which bans boys from wearing shorts during the summer.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1Lx9lQFD7

I have commented on this to the effect that he looks absolutely fine in the skirt and, as skirts are cool and sensible garments to wear in summer, there is no reason that other boys couldn't wear them, too. I would urge others on here to add their comments. PLEASE!!

Stu

I can't see your comment - maybe the Mail has deleted it (which wouldn't surprise me!!!)

No, the way the Daily Mail works is that the first comments are moderated. No comments have been published as yet, so hopefully mine will appear in due course. Sometimes they then moderate all comments - sometimes they onlöy moderate the first few.

stu

That school is about four miles from where I sit...

Wow.

In other news, I have written to the head of my children's school pointing out that it is unfair that the girls are allowed to wear trousers, but the boys are forbidden from wearing skirts. No policy change as yet...

What I find particularly interesting, having read the full article, is that the headmaster says that the boys are free to wear skirts if they want to (of course, the Daily Mail calls that a 'loophole' in the rules, implying that, had the rules been drafted sensibly, the boys wouldn't be allowed to wear them).

What we lose in the printed article is the tone of voice the head used when making that statement. We can't tell whether he was proposing a way for boys to have cool legs in the summer months that is both practical and compliant with standing policy, or if he was simply sarcastically pointing out that boys can, if they wish to face humiliation, cool their knees...

It will be interesting to watch this situation, now that it has been clearly demonstrated that the rules at this particular school are gender-neutral. I guess it is possible that more boys will wear skirts. Of course, I may just be a hopeless optimist.


Paul.

Another article, where the head teacher doesn't appear to be sarcastic at all, can be seen here :- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed ... ation.html

While the Daily Wail is undoubtedly biased, and the head teacher may or may not have been sarcastic in his comments, the boy does look fine in the skirt, and does appear to have a fair number of supporters.
Good Luck to him!

I suspect what we may be looking at here is a manifestation of "the law of unintended consequences". Sure, the rules were written to allow girls to wear skirts but to disallow the option of shorts for the lads -- what boy in his right mind would want to be the target of the level of abuse the his fellow lads would heap upon him for wearing a skirt? Or not -- and in this case I think it's the "not" that draws the winning hand. The adults' thought processes were likely too ossified to see the potential of a challenge.

Kudos to the lad for thinking outside the box; he played that hand wonderfully well. We now get to see what The Authorities (and The Parents) do in response. That is one gutsy lad!

I'll not say that the lad discovered a loophole as was alleged by the Daily Wail (that's one great moniker!), as rules are rules; however, I cannot fathom that the adults could have been so daft as to not recognise that some enterprising young man would "have a go" at their rule. But, if it gains traction for the notion of guys in skirts then I'm all for it!

jaycee wrote:Another article, where the head teacher doesn't appear to be sarcastic at all, can be seen here :- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed ... ation.html

Er... That's word-for-word the same article. The only difference is the photograph. The Telegraph and the Wail are both Murdoch papers, so this isn't particularly surprising, and they cater for very different audiences, so the duplication is likely to go unnoticed.

I'm still impressed that happened just a couple of miles from work, though.

If you check out the Daily Mail page now you will see there are lots of comments - including mine. I hope you will all add your contributions.

Stu

Stu wrote:If you check out the Daily Mail page now you will see there are lots of comments - including mine. I hope you will all add your contributions.

Well over 200 comments, I could not be bothered to wade through them to see if mine is there or not.

Have fun,


Ian.

Ian

I checked and yours is there.

There are now 355 comments, so it is a matter of some interest. The focus, of course, is on the right to wear shorts, but a surprising number of respondents have suggested that the skirt looks OK and there is no reason a boy shouldn't wear it. Of course, it would be great if other boys followed Chris's example and wore skirts throughout the summer at school. By the end of summer, it would be as normal to see boys wearing them as girls and it would cease to be an issue. I'm not holding my breath on that possibility, though.

Stu

Stu,

that would be a fine result but, like you, I somehow don't think it'll happen. Shame, really.

Of course, there's also a lot of comments on the Mail article about how it's "just wrong", but one has to expect that with such a high-brow publication...


Paul.

Watch it on the Beeb here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-be ... s-13362700

Nice, low-key approach to the whole thing.

I was just about to post the same link, Stevie, but you beat me to it.

Stu