Tailor-mad Britain

Is the case of teachers who were banned from wearing jeans and t-shirts yet another proof that overpaid school management boards need to justify their own existence?

Or are they just putting a false sense of order and perceived up-market pretentions to what’s supposed to be an environment supporting diversity and creativity?

There are two areas of everyday life of modern humans where adding the word “British” automatically creates an oxymoron. Cuisine and fashion. Agatha Christie had Hercule Poirot said that British didn’t have a cuisine, only food. And while some may argue that British fashion does exist, they would have a hard time defending an argument that it equals a good taste and that it translates to the masses and transposes to the everyday clothing. Ridiculously old-fashioned suits, skirts that emphasize all the wrong body parts and crazy coloured socks that make their wearer look like an idiot.

Strangely, though, Brits seem to be obsessed by clothing, but they really must like uniforms. Thousands of bank managers, million of kids etc. get of the tube, buses and cars in exactly same clothes. Watching the crowd at Canary Wharf, London’s other financial centre, kind of resembles a watching swarming in a school canteen. Sure, inedible junk is replaced with smoothies and supposedly healthy snacks, but the feeling of uniformity is there.

So great is the obsession with the concept of “dress code” that in 2006 the Daily Mail (who else) attacked the BBC when corporation’s reporters stationed in a war-zone during the Lebanon-Israel conflict didn’t wear suits and ties. “The truth is that the BBC is throwing away credibility by allowing its reporters to appear without ties. It implies carelessness and shows a lack of respect for the viewer and the subject matter,” wrote one Michael Cole. One year later, the tabloid’s daily maul was another reporter’s dress comprising shirt and jeans. And it’s not just the broadcasting…. Not a single GP doctor I saw in the UK wore proper doctor’s garments. Suits, shirts and ties whose knots are hotbed for bacteria.

School managements, after scrapping practical science experiments (children can watch them on YouTube), are on their crusade to kill off the last remaining bit of diversity – by forcing teachers to stick to the dress code deemed appropriate by the body of busybodies. All in an attempt to offer business-like appearance.

Birmingham Metropolitan College requires staff to wear business suits and skirts and … tidy, well groomed hair. On the index are: jeans, t-shirts, t-shirts with signs, inappropriate earrings, tattoos (must be covered), trainers (that’s sneakers), outrageous hairdos and colours….

Last year, a school in Tower Hamlets, one of the London’s most deprived boroughs (although it also covers the aforementioned Canary Wharf) sacked a teacher because he refused to give up his usual dress code – trainers and tracksuit pants. His outstanding results (96% of his students passed maths and science GCSE exams) and side activities (he worked with disabled children) had not effect on the schools decision. According to the council, he didn’t comply with “a reasonable management instruction”.

About 15 years ago, as I walked down the hall at a police station (reporting a crime) in a post-communist country, I noticed a sizable poster titled “A proper grooming of a member” with a picture of policeman’s head sporting a hair-do deemed proper by communist regime. “We keep it here for fun,” a plain-clothed detective answered my quizzical look.