A tedious debate rears its ugly head once more
TO HAVE long hair in schools or not to have long hair in schools, that is the question that has been dividing the country. With only a few months to go till the election, the only debate that’s got people more than a little shouty is whether tis nobler in the mind to allow a long-haired boy to attend a secondary school, as long as his hair is off the collar and out off the eyes.
The burning issue has been thoroughly drilled down into – which headmaster made the initial ruling at the school, the right to freedom of expression for the boy, and the sleuthing of amateur historians delving deep into our hirsute past sourcing photos of schoolboys from the 1960s and 1970s with long tresses that were neither off the collar nor high above the brow but falling into the eyes in the manner of an English sheep dog.
In the midst of all the ‘‘dems da rool’’ texts, tweets and heated discussions, I spared a thought for school caretakers of secondary schools where long hair is tolerated.
Having in
the
past
shared lodgings with long-haired men of the post-modern Viking persuasion, I discovered it wasn’t just the soap you had to worry about in the shower but the choke of human hairballs in the plug hole, big enough to send a plumber round the U-bend.
Parents going into bat for their loin fruit’s image problems at school is something I still find rather odd.
As the population expands so will the school rolls as mobs of hairy-headed boys pour off the sports fields and head for the shower blocks to strain the drains and the bulk funding. Solution – shower caps should be introduced forthwith and hair-nets for the classroom.
For more than a decade the fashion has been for males to ape the closeshaved look, with family bathrooms abuzz with the noise of electric hair clippers rigorously removing any hint of a curl. So close were the shaves one could have been forgiven for imagining that chaps en masse were preparing for war, had just come out of jail, or had cooties. Balding and bald men were thrilled everyone wanted to become junior Ross Kemps as a whole generation of young men blase about predetermined hair loss and never having delighted in the Marianne Faithfull effect – ‘‘felt the warm wind in their hair’’ – went straight from a No 1 cut to bald with no experimentation on the way.
The tedious debate on boys’ hair length in secondary schools hasn’t reared its ugly head in the media for years, though I seem to have a vague memory of a male nipper in recent times having something saucy sculpted into the side of his swede that a school frowned upon when he turned up at the gates, but that was the exception.
I think his dear old mum championed her son’s rights to express himself artistically there, which is the case with Lucan Battison and his side-kick dad.
Parents going into bat for their loin fruit’s image problems at school is something I still find rather odd, coming from an era where noisy parental interference made the child a mark among their peers.
You only have to look at the tantrums of some parents who cannot keep to the sidelines during school sports matches to realise it’s they who are ill disciplined and should be removed quietly from the field, taken round the corner and given six of the best.
And no books down the underpants please, that would be cheating.