It was a bad week for Irish teenagers. I’ve said it in these columns before, but in so many ways, they are treated with contempt by people in authority here. Well, it’s getting worse rather than better.
How else can you explain the decision by the Principal of Tullamore College, Edward McEvoy, to bar three students from sitting their Junior Certificate in the school last week? The students – Enda Carroll (15), Andrew Kelly (15) and Sean Treacy (16) – were told that their hair was too short. That’s right: too fucking short…
Arrangements were made that they could sit the exam in Clara, six miles away. While two of the pupils and their parents reluctantly agreed to the arrangement, this offer was dismissed as unacceptable by Enda Carroll and his mother Pam.
After the media got hold of the story, a further offer was made that the boys could sit the exam in isolation in Tullamore College. But by this stage the damage had been done. Huge disruption had been caused to the school, and presumably to the other students. But the three who in the first place had been told to bugger off to Clara, were the ones to really suffer. In particular Enda Carroll has the basis for a major grievance. He and his mother felt strongly enough that they refused to do the exam entirely. “Why should they be put in a room as if they had some sort of disease?” Pam said to the Sunday Tribune. As a result, Enda will have to sit his Junior Cert next year, in a different school.
And what was it all about? It is apparently against school’s disciplinary code to have a so-called Blade 1 haircut, and the principal accused the boys of breaking this rule. But these are fine distinctions – how come Mr. McEvoy was so sure? In the pictures that I saw, Enda Carroll’s hair looked very sharp and smart – and nothing like a shaved head, which presumably is the look the school is ultimately afraid of.
While we’re on the subject, what happens if a boy gets alopaecia? Or cancer and needs radiation treatment?
Or at a simpler level, what if a boy asks for a Blade 2 and the barber goes a bit too tight? Either way, it’d be one thing applying this rule to the (subjective) letter during the course of the school year – but to do so when there are exams under way is utterly misguided and disproportionate.
Mr. McEvoy sports a moustache. Now, I don’t intend to get personal about it, but there is word of a new movement whose aim is to introduce a national ban on teachers growing moustaches: the practice is, according to the activists behind the campaign, giving very bad example to the students. Besides, they ask, why should a teacher be allowed to have facial hair of this kind, when students aren’t? Good point.
In fact a lot of the rules which schools enforce are discriminatory and, in some cases, just plain daft. For example, in most co-educational schools: girls can wear their hair long but boys can’t. Girls can dye their hair, but boys can’t. Girls can wear ear-rings, but boys can’t. Girls can wear basic make-up, but boys can’t. Girls can wear skirts or trousers. Boys can only wear trousers.
Hang on a second: since they aren’t allowed to grow facial hair, is there anything that boys can do that girls can’t?
The fact is that an awful lot of energy is wasted on this kind of bullshit, which has nothing to do with education. It represents a victory for illogic and small-mindedness – which is exactly what the principal of Tullamore College showed when he effectively told three of his pupils to shove off. It’s as if the assumption is that teenagers can’t think. They won’t see stupid and discriminatory rules for what they are. And even if they do, the authorities attitude seems to come down to two words: fuck ‘em.
That’s the only conclusion you could draw from the fiasco of the legislation on sex, introduced by the Government last week. In this column last issue, I suggested that it might be a good thing that Michael McDowell would be the Minister responsible for framing the new legislation. “A lily-livered craw thumper he is not,” I said. Well, I was wrong. A craw thumper he may not be – but he proved to be lily-livered alright, in effect letting Enda Kenny dictate the terms of the legislation.
An what an unholy mess it is, riven with discrimination and wide open to constitutional challenge as a result. The flaws are dealt with in more detail elsewhere in this issue, but what is utterly galling is the fact that tens of thousands of good, decent teenagers have been criminalised in one fell swoop.
What it underlines is that neither the Government nor the biggest opposition party – that’s Fine Gael – give a shit about teenagers. They were more concerned with saving their own political arses than in framing legislation that would take into account the very real need that many teenagers have to experiment sexually. It goes beyond being lily-livered. There is a profound cynicism at the heart of it: teenagers can’t vote so we are happy to turn them into criminals.
It is appalling that the Dail would collectively enter this kind of thoroughly twisted, contradictory and viciously anti-male legislation onto the statute books. And yet we expect teenagers to treat the institutions of the State with respect. Dream on, suckers.