[HPFGU-OTChatter] Remember the Madness.

[Shaun Hately]

On 4 Jun 2005 at 20:05, Steve wrote:

> I guess he can arrange to take the exam again, but it still seems
> unreasonably petty. Although, when it  comes to school uniforms it
> seems that these schools have a long and rich history of petty and
> near malicious enforcement of the rules.

Reading this, I note that he would have been allowed to take the 
examination, if he'd agreed to wear a pair of shoes from lost 
property, but he refused to comply.

Now it says he has a medical problem with his feet - if that's true, 
and if the problem is significant enough that wearing these other 
shoes for the period of the exam could have actually caused him real 
problems, then I think he's been treated rather unfairly.

But only if that's true, and this isn't just his excuse for refusing 
to comply with school rules.

My own school was really strict on uniform - and I would think that 
they might have done the same thing with our VCE exams (I'm not sure 
because it never arose). But the issue wouldn't have been about the 
uniform - that just would have been the symbol. It would have been 
about the deliberate and knowing refusal to obey a rule of the 
school.

School uniforms are generally not important in and of themselves - 
but as a symbol of a schools authority they can become quite 
important. If you let students get away with minor violations, major 
violations become much more common.

If they'd just sent him away, I would not be defending the school - 
but his refusal to accept the two compromises they offered - to wear 
another pair of shoes they would make available or to go home and 
change, does change things. He had choices available. He didn't take 
them.

Yes, he says, he went home and didn't go back because he decided he'd 
be too late - well, he still should have gone back - if he'd gone 
back to school, again I'd have a problem if the school had refused to 
let him in, having sent him home to change. But he didn't go back.

The real problem is we have such little information from this article 
- we don't know if Adam is a generally compliant boy who generally 
doesn't cause problems - or if he's someone who constantly breaks 
rules in the belief they shouldn't apply to him.

We don't know if his medical condition, whatever it is, is serious 
enough that he had a genuinely good reason to refuse the schools 
first compromise, and we don't how long it should have taken him to 
get home and change with regards to the second (if the school knew he 
could not get home and back in the time before the exam, that is a 
very different thing from if they knew he should have ample time to 
do so).

The school may have acted unfairly - but it also may not have done 
so.

This boy is sixteen - he's old enough to be expected to accept the 
consequences of his own actions.

Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the 
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that 
need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil
Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia