Schoolboy in a skirt

A story doing the rounds at the moment is that of 12-year old Chris Whitehead, who apparently turned up to school the other day wearing a skirt in protest against his school's ban on boys wearing shorts during the hot weather. There's no denying he's got a certain amount of guts - although personally I thought the skirt suited him and he looked kinda cute in it.

When I was his age, it was the norm for boys to wear short trousers all through Junior School, only graduating to long ones as first formers around the age of 12 - in something almost akin to a rite of passage. So I doubt if any of us would've wanted to revert back to being little boys in shorts, however hot the weather might've been. And skirts were not an item of uniform in an all-boys school!

I noted with interest that his teacher was quoted as commending his "independence" and "individuality", and it was rather innovative of him to have spotted the loophole in the school's uniform policy which didn't specify that skirts could only be worn by girls. Nevertheless, whatever she may have said to him in private, her public stance on it made a refreshing change from the clumsy ineptitude with which schools generally seem to handle pupil protests. On that note, it does occur to me to wonder who's been orchestrating the publicity which all this seems to have attracted?