Birmingham Pupil Suspended 'for Peaky Blinders Haircut'

[mikey4444]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-36269041

Not sure what is wrong here. This little lad looks very neat and tidy to me !

I had hair only marginally longer when I was a lad in the 50's.

[andy-hughes]

vuclan - //As far as I'm concerned it still comes down to the school considers that all the children are uniform is more important then their education. Another case is being taken to the high court because a father took his child on holiday during term time and " the child's education suffers", yet this school can interrupt a child's education because somebody doesn't like his hairstyle. //

I think your conclusion is easy to reach, but I think it is flawed.

Education encompasses a vast range of influences and rules, of which uniform policy is only one.

To take that policy in isolation and infer that its implementation takes precedence over basic education is in my view to over-simplify the issue.

It is that logic that makes a 'news story' where none really exists - but that does not make it an accurate assessment of the situation.

[fiction-factory]

ParsleyDumpling- isn't that for the school to decide. It's the school's published policy and they implement it. They make a judgement. Or maybe they should appoint a 'parental panel' to come in and check on everyone's hair styles each week. Anyway, the decision may not be based on fashion if the policy says "odd or unusual, severe, decorative or fashionable hairstyles/haircuts are not permitted"

We don't know why the haircut was considered acceptable for 7 months. Maybe it changed slightly. Maybe the school decided to become stricter as more people started to have some closely shaved bits mixed with longer bits or because of local gang issues. Maybe warnings had been given.
We don't know the full story

[naomi24]

andy-hughes, I think Vulcan's assessment is absolutely accurate - and pertinent.

[andy-hughes]

fiction-factory - //We don't know why the haircut was considered acceptable for 7 months. Maybe it changed slightly. Maybe the school decided to become stricter as more people started to have some closely shaved bits mixed with longer bits or because of local gang issues. Maybe warnings had been given.
We don't know the full story //

I agree - I think there is more to this story than the 'knee-jerk- reaction that the media always stimulates when it takes a potentially complex situation, takes the complexity out of it entirely, gets the wrong end of the stick, and proceeds to beat about the bush with it.

[andy-hughes]

Naomi - //andy-hughes, I think Vulcan's assessment is absolutely accurate - and pertinent. //

I think Vulcan's view falls into the trap set by the media - to take an apparently simple straightforward situation and jump on the perceived 'injustice' or it because it strikes a chord with all of us because we have all been to school and have opinions based on its control systems which we experienced.

I think the reality is that the situation is more complex than the story suggests, and that there is a lot of potentially mitigating information which we have not been made party to, and that allows instant conclusions to be drawn - but it does not mean they are correct.

[Togo]

I am sure that when the school "spokesman" invents, what they consider to be, a plausible reason for the boys suspension they will release the self serving, obfuscating, mealy mouthed justification to the.....................press.

[-Talbot-]

andy ...on this thread it is me on another thread it could be retrocop or AOG or naomi or divebuddy (where is he?) I have had disagreements with all the above but it never goes on for page after page after page.




'I can explain it, but I can't understand it for you.'

Anyway as you have told us before you will argue until you have declared yourself the winner. So for that reason and also because many posters seem to get suspended when opposing your view I will stop posting on this thread.

[maggiebee]

Having never heard of Peaky Blinders until now, I think this young man's haircut is perfectly acceptable. My own grandson recently had a number 2 cut following a slight "accident" with scissors and nobody has blinked an eye.

[fiction-factory]

...Although of course it would be up to the school, not you as a parent, to decide whether it's acceptable. If you don't like the policy but want to stay at the school and change the policy then there are ways to discuss it with the school/governors without dragging your child in front of the cameras and forcing him to miss school.

[fiction-factory]

maggiebee- in your case I meant you as a grandparent

[naomi24]

andy-hughes, Vulcan’s view is pertinent. Quite simply a parent is prosecuted for taking a child out of school, but a school will deliberately deprive a child of education for its own reasons.. If there is more potentially mitigating information, as you suggest, the person who made this decision should have had the common sense to discuss that information with the parents in order to resolve any problems. An eight year old should not have been personally involved at all and he most certainly shouldn’t have suffered the humiliation of exclusion. Disgraceful.

[fiction-factory]

The parent had a choice- get the hair tidied up or face a suspension. The parent chose the suspension. There have to be sanctions.

[vulcan42]

andy-hughes, if the child isn't at school, the schools decision don't forget, then all the other rules are abrogated.

[naomi24]

fiction-factory, According to the link ....//Joshua's mother Claire said the school had "gone too far" and suggested she could have been given a warning instead.//

Whatever the circumstances, the argument should have remained with the parents.

[fiction-factory]

I think several issues are being conflated here. Yes the haircut looks smart to most of us and the school appears to be a little heavy-handed- but we can't see all of it and don't know the full story. It's up to the school to make the decision and give parents the choice and it's up to the parent to decide what to do. The suspension was the option they chose.

[naomi24]

fiction-factory //It's up to the school to make the decision and give parents the choice and it's up to the parent to decide what to do. The suspension was the option they chose. //

If that's so why did the mother say she could have been given a warning?

[fiction-factory]

I don't know what you mean, Naomi. What do you think is the answer to your question?

[fiction-factory]

Were there 3 options - change it, warning or suspension? I don't see the point of a warning if the hairstyle remains.

[ParsleyDumpling]

FF,

The only way you could have "tidied" up that haircut, as the school had asked her to do, would be to give the child a crew cut. Why would that (more severe cut)have been any more acceptable, especially since their policy seems to disallow severe styles?

I think (but this is only my opinion) the mothers' issue here is the inconsistency in applying their own uniform policy. Her son had had that haircut for months with no problem.

[naomi24]

fiction-factory, well, if she hadn't been given a warning, how could she have been offered the choice you say she was offered? The offer of a choice would have been a warning - wouldn't it?