Smith: Orange pip ding-dong shows it’s time to end school silliness

Jan 20 2009 by Our Correspondent, Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday

AT a time when the major concern of parents is what we are doing to ensure that their children can learn to read, write and count up properly in a well-disciplined classroom, we have been treated to some extraordinary silliness, writes MSP Liz Smith.

Firstly, we are told that schools no longer exist. They are now “places for learning” or “community campuses” – all because one headmistress in Sheffield (who, incidentally, also encourages her pupils to wear slippers at school) said that the term “school” has “very negative connotations and is therefore likely to upset the children”. Well, thank goodness for the parents of the pupils at this school who said this was utterly ridiculous and told the local council, in very plain English, to leave their school alone.

Then, we read in the newspapers that one school has banned satsumas and clementines from the school dinner menu because they contain “a high incidence of pips” which might cause severe digestive problems to those who consume them. The fact that the same school defends its decision to continue offering its pupils slices of water melons with the claim that water melon pips are black are more easily seen shows just how well the national healthy eating campaign is going.

But, perhaps the most ridiculous thing I have heard these past few weeks however, is the suggestion that school bells are dangerous and should be banned because they are too loud.

While these are, undoubtedly, isolated incidents of madness, there is widespread concern that political correctness is having a very detrimental effect on some aspects of classroom life. This has to stop.

For me, and I suspect the vast majority of parents across the country, there should be three priorities within education just now; much more rigorous testing of primary school children when it comes to the 3Rs, better discipline in the classroom and opportunities for all children to get access to decent extra-curricular activities. Teachers who, on the whole, are a highly professional and well-motivated bunch of people, are crying out for support to get on with their jobs. It is totally unacceptable that this duty is being undermined by some politically-correct zealots who are living on a different planet. Give us our schools back and get on with educating our children properly.