Tuesday, 12 September 2017

Gender Neutral School Uniforms

So, I've been thinking about the recent case where a family took their six year old out of school because he'd seen another child wearing a skirt - and the child was a boy. The parents said that the child had been confused and upset, though presumably he had no problem with girls wearing trousers. I was glad to hear that the other parents at the school had rallied round the family of the skirt wearing child.

It reminded me of the private school in London I once saw a documentary about - set up in the 1940s, I think, the headmaster wanted all the children to be treated identically, so he wanted a uniform which every child could wear. His solution to the problem was knickerbockers. I looked it up, and the school still exists today. It's called Hill House, and this is the uniform:


Apparently Prince Charles was a pupil there.

But why shouldn't boys wear skirts? Here is a picture from another school, where the boys wanted to wear shorts in the hot summer term. When they were refused permission, they came to school like this:


They're boys. They're wearing skirts. Nobody is confused about their gender or sexuality here. They just wanted to wear a comfortable item of clothing.

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