Well, I wrote the other day about an anomaly at a school in Kent who had banned his teachers from using red pen to mark pupils’ work. But another story in yesterday’s press has quickly put headmistress – sorry, headteacher – Linda Kingdon on the 2009 Total & Utter Prat contenders list.
She has banned the use of the word ‘school’ to describe her… school. It has ‘negative connotations’, you see.
Instead it is to be known as ‘a place for learning’. Its head hopes the change will help ‘de-institutionalise’ the school.
She sounds a right laugh, doesn’t she. Having worked in industry for many years, I can imagine the off-site meetings her teachers will have been involved in, the reams flipchart paper (all in nice pen colours – except red: we don’t want any negative connotations), presentations by ‘groups’ (they’ll naturally have all been split into groups), and so on.
‘We decided from an early stage we didn’t want to use the word “school”,’ she said yesterday. ‘This is Watercliffe Meadow, a place for learning. One reason was many of the parents of the children here had very negative connotations of school.
‘We wanted to de-institutionalise the place and bring the school closer to real life.’ Watercliffe Meadow, which was named after Watermead, Shirecliffe and Busk Meadow schools, is described as a 2,000 sq m learning environment for 481 children, from nursery stage through to Year 6.
There’s a photograph of her, as well. She has the kind of irritatingly smug countenance which, when you consider the crap it spouts, is rather more to be expected at the rear end of a farm animal than on the shoulders of someone charged with teaching future generations.
Fortunately, Ms Kingdon – and possibly her eager-to-please teachers – are the only people on the planet who think it is a good idea. Parents aren’t impressed, neither is the Campaign for Plain English .