That’s G as in gay. A
friend of my daughter's, who she met through an acting workshop, has fallen
foul of her school by the most unusual route.
Apparently, the
teenager needed to prepare an exhibition on her chosen topic as part of an IB
personal project. The topic she chose was boy bands, and to publicise the
lunchtime event, she placed posters round the school aimed at grabbing folks'
attention.
So far, so good. The
problems started when a nosey-parker teacher type from the Antipodes saw a group of pupils
looking at the poster and decided to investigate. Horrified, she read the
following:
If you think boy
bands are talentless, "gay" and rubbish …
Come along at
lunchtime on Thursday and Friday and be proved
wrong.
From there, the
affair snowballed with the pupil hauled before the Headmaster on various counts
of insensitivity and homophobia, and her email of explanation and apology for
any offence caused being sent to every member of the teaching staff.
C.S. Lewis used to
complain about critics who made such a habit of reading between the lines that
they had lost the ability to read the lines themselves - including the
punctuation. Seemed like a few of them ended up teaching the IB in Hong Kong .
Post-script: I've
just been told by my daughter that her friend recently informed her school that
she would be leaving Hong Kong to study in the States in the
autumn. To paraphrase Congreve:
"Heaven has no
rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor Hong Kong a fury like a teacher scorned."
8 comments:
I do think that the title of Bloomberg's morsing show, "First Up With Susan Li" is rather suggestive.
From an educational perspective, that's very bad. If deemed of sufficient importance to warrant follow-up, such matters should be dealt with between the student and the principal. How terrible the poor girl must be feeling to be victimized so!
The key fact here is that it was an Aussie (a Kiwi wouldn't have done this) teacher. It's more or less compulsory down there.
Key word: mincersi
"Morsing?" Is she moonlighting as a sleuth, Foamiest?
Do you mean "Does she go undercover?" You may very well think that, Uliest, old chap, but I couldn't possibly comment.
Key word: blessoid - something you catch from a Catholic priest.
The term "gay" as used by many UK teenagers these days can also mean "uncool".
Personally I would prefer First Up to Fourth or Fifth
Mr B, I fancy the word 'gay' has many more semantic peregrinations to make even in the course of thsi century. Who knows, it may even go back to meaning light-hearted and carefree?
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