He also addressed 1,368 pupils at morning assembly wearing the black skirt, which boys are permitted to wear due to a loophole in the policy. Chris believes that forcing boys to wear long trousers during the hot summer months affects concentration and their ability to learn. He said: ”In the summer girl students are allowed to wear skirts but boys are not allowed to wear shorts.
”We think that this discriminates against boys. I will march in a skirt with other boys waving banners and making a lot of noise. I will be wearing the skirt at school all day in protest at the uniform policy and addressing the assembly with the student council, wearing a skirt.” Chris’s mum Liz Whitehead, 50, has praised her son for standing up for ”what he believes in.”
She said: ”I am delighted that Chris is taking action on what he believes in, which the school actually encourages, so he is only doing what he is taught. I am really proud he is brave enough to wear a skirt to school for what he believes in and back him all the way.” Headteacher Robert Campbell said the ban on shorts was imposed following consultation with students, teachers and parents in 2009. Ultimately the boys can wear a skirt to school because it doesn’t say they can’t in the uniform policy and we would be discriminating against them if we did not allow it.”
5 comments:
Good for him.
The headteacher could also have told why the ban on shorts was imposed.
Well done him! No way I would've had the courage to do that when I was his age.
I really hope the other pupils support him and don't simply bully him, as I suspect that would be the initial reaction in most schools, sadly.
It happened in my school in the 80's, girls were allowed mini-skirts but boys were not allowed shorts. So there was a big protest by boys that they should be able to wear shorts. The direction debated and decided that girls were not allowed to wear mini-skirts. But we were all allowed to wear bermuda shorts, and girls could still wear skirts but no higher than the knees.
Woogums, what was so different between the girl legs and the boy legs? Why did they think it was OK to show the former but not the latter?
When I was teaching junior high in LA more than 20 years ago, the boys staged a similar protest--quite a few of them. The principal eventually relented and let all the students wear bermuda-length short.
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