Saturday 6 September 2014

Complaining, Something I Never Do!




Round our way Mum's little angels have gone to school.  The streets are now safer, the shops less crowded and indeed much quieter and the museum has a hollow ring to it these days.  The classrooms are very different from my day, computers arrive very early while we had to use pencil and paper! Classes are much smaller and parents complain there is only one teacher and three helpers for a class of twenty something, ha, our class reached 41 at one point but did we grumble, no!  
At secondary I wore the compulsory blazer and gray trousers like everyone else but was very envious of the 'rough' types who wore combat jacket and jeans, the trendy outfit of the time. They got away with this by claiming poverty, which was often true, but an awful loot of it was the brass neck attitude against authority.  It must be said most of those dressed thus were of an intellect deprivation culture also and many will not have risen to the highest positions in the land, if indeed they remain alive!  
This comes to mind as several stories appear in the media whenever school restarts, usually regarding some precious child who insists on wearing the emerald green footwear specifically banned by the school rules or has a pin in her tongue (to give her "confidence"), or hair designed in the latest banned trend. The press make a lot of such stories and the typical response when the spoilt brat is banned is 'serve them right!'  I agree with that.   Instead however of dealing with the dear brat in the making I suggest hammering the parent, usually a single mother with no sense of responsibility determined to do what she wants art all costs.  Occasionally daddy whines about his pet but normally when a man is in the house such things occur less, I wonder why?  
There is in the cases I noted recently no 'poverty' involved, indeed the opposite or they could not afford the trendy footwear, so it is selfish ignoring of the school rules.  Now such rules can indeed be a bit extreme, we were not allowed to smoke in the toilets for instance, but normally it is cheaper for the parents if they pay for the school uniform rather than the latest trend.
Maybe I just hanker for that combat jacket even yet?


You may have noticed the news recently.  Ukraine fighting although peace moves are afoot, ISIS or whatever they are called today killing folks dramatically in Syria/Iraq, drought threatening Ethiopia, problems still in Democratic Congo, Christians facing attacks in northern India, wars and rumours of wars abounding.  The TV offering hour after hour of 'pap' masquerading as worthy viewing, soap operas, cooks, bloody cooks everywhere, crime programmes from forty years ago, mostly American, and little else but drama that is no more than a soap opera with explosions.  So what drew most complaints to the BBC?  A game show!
The Pointless quiz is being repeated, in the way the BBC repeat everything, and 1217 people complained because one episode was missed out!  One quiz show episode missed and over a thousand people complained!  When first run in 2012 they made a mistake.  An answer was given and it was decided this was incorrect, it turns out this was a wrong decision.  A large number of people wrote in to indicate the fault and so to avoid this happening with the repeat they dropped that episode.  However this resulted in a huge amount of complaints!  

What does it say about us I wonder?      




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8 comments:

soubriquet said...

We had a fairly rigorous school uniform code. It covered everything up to underwear and socks. And the Gymn kit/sports kit. No Adidas/nike labels, no designer labels at all, the only labels that were importand were the white ladybird labels with name of pupil in red required to be stitched into every item.
We had to have a school cap, the wearing of which was compulsory. This cap had to be worn to and from school and from home to school, being seen without it was adisciplinary offence.
The cap had a fancy enamel badge, with the school crest, and latin motto 'virtutem petamus'. Nobody wore an intact one. On your first day of school, bewildered in the big new place, you would be seized upon, as all the other pink faced newcomers were, by a mob of older kids who'd grab your new cap with its gleaming badge, and slam it repeatedly against a sandstone wall, until much or most of the enamel was smashed and the shiny metal scuffed and scraped.
And of course, on returning home you'd face irate parents who would demand to know why your new expensive badge was ruined when it had been bought at great expense and sewn on by your mother... And somehow the fact that you'd been a powerless speck in a seething mass of powerful creatures would be irrelevant . It was your fault. A little like being a french farmer in the face of the wehrmacht, and refusing to allow them across your land. Or trying....

Jenny Woolf said...

I get exasperated at people who try to teach their kids to defy the rules, it seems. As my old teacher used to say, it's not clever and it's not funny.

Adullamite said...

Soub, Very well written with only one hand! You are right about compulsory caps and yobs!

Jenny, It is almost always the parents fault!

soubriquet said...

footballer haircuts...
we had the a few wannabe skinheads, tried it with rolled up trouser legs and docs.
The hair was dealt with by compulsory cap wearing in school hours, and the threat that if it was not allowed to grow back, then the next term would be spent at another school.
The clothes? Sent straight home, detention the following week and a thousand word essay for the following morning. I know, because i once wore a BLUE shirt to school....

Adullamite said...

Soub, Bovver Boys! I knew you were one!

soubriquet said...

Not me, skinheads always seemed so regimented, an intolerant hitler-yoof culture. red braces, ben sherman shirts, doc martin boots, too much like a uniform. ska.

i was listening to led zeppelin and creedence clearwater, emerson lake and palmer, and jimi hendrix.....

Also i had no interest in fooball, and if you were a bovver boy, you relied on football matches to get you into rages and regular fighting mayhem.

me/ i was never interested in fighting either.

Adullamite said...

Soub, I recall how the polis ended English Bovver Boys Bovver at football matches, they confiscated their bootlaces!

Lee said...

School holidays start here in a couple of weeks...a good time to stay away from the Gold Coast. Hang on! I always stay away from the Gold Coast and the madding crowds that are always maddening to be a part of!