The City of Ely Community College in Cambridgeshire, England has decided to restore discipline to its student body by nonsensically conflating genuinely disruptive behavior (talking in class) with mere individualism (wearing mismatched socks or brightly colored hair-bobbles). School principal Catherine Jenkinson-Dix is hell bent on producing a generation of young Britons who can't tell the difference between cooperating with your peers and blind conformity — just what the future needs (assuming that the future won't require any original thought).
Nonetheless, some shocked parents are attacking the new rules and accusing Ms. Jenkinson-Dix of turning the school into a "prison."
"I'm absolutely appalled. They are wrecking pupils' education and turning it into a prison," Amanda King, 34, who pulled her 12-year-old son Ben and daughter Shannon, 14, out of classes, told the Cambridge News.
"Staff are nit-picking for everything -for behaviour, for what they wear. Apparently they are not allowed to wear any accessories or even coats in school now."
Another mother, who asked not to be named, said, "Yes, children should be taught to respect their teachers but to punish them for wearing bright hair bobbles or having their mobile phones is petty. I'm not happy about the new rules at all."
U.K. school cracks down on bad manners
(Thanks, Bytefire, via Submitterator!)
(Image: Day 6 / 365 – Thinking in the corner, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from restlessglobetrotter's photostream)
