Thirst for punishment over drinking straws is totally bananas
The creepiest thing about the leftist authoritarianism of Corbyn-era Britain is that its shock troops, aka the politically correct thought police, are often young. And, sadly, the elders – who should know better – are desperately trying to keep up. Nowhere is this clearer than in schools and universities. Once decent institutions are being transformed into penitentiaries of political correctness, with those in charge eager to measure and monitor, to penalise and scrutinise every word and thought, lest it offends.
An interesting variant of this can now be seen at the independent Brighton College, which has taken the fervour for policing political rectitude to a new level. Last week, its head teacher, Richard Cairns, announced that students caught with non-biodegradable cups and bottles would be punished in the same way, and with the same severity, as those caught smoking. “We will treat plastic bottles, straws and non-biodegradable cups as anti-social, in the same way that for decades we have banned cigarettes,” Cairns said, chillingly. He was, he said, partly responding to a campaign by students for a reduction in the use of plastic. The students were upset by David Attenborough’s Blue
Planet II, which showed the heartbreaking harm to marine life caused by our plastic waste.
But punishing pupils for being in possession of straws? What strange and menacing idiocy. In his haste to respond to his pupils’ perfectly laudable environmentalism – and, indeed, to play his part in tackling environmental degradation – Cairns has lost sight of the basics. Cigarettes have always been naughty for students; straws were fine for everyone until about six months ago.
More importantly, Cairns’s thirst for punishment is not about vice but about political activism. To embrace the anti-plastics movement is an activist choice – a perfectly good one – not a matter for school order or obedience. Surely any reasonable person, let alone a head teacher, knows that you don’t encourage activism by penalising those who aren’t activists. If Cairns is keen to help the environment, he should offer courses, talks, instruction – not suspend students for carrying an Evian bottle.
We live in a world where everything we say or do can get us in trouble, sometimes big trouble, if it can be deemed politically offensive; in other words, those who don’t fall into line are punished. But please, can’t we start trying to protect perspective as well as the planet?