Goodbye Mr Steak and Chips

Hats off to Andrea Charman, a ground-breaking school headmistress from Kent (why are they always from Kent?) who has made the news today.

She has decided that one of the school pets is to be sold to the local abattoir. (She claims that this was done democratically, but I suspect that the children were given the choice of “Listen brats, it’s either Marcus or one of you”)

She says that “I am trying to prepare children for the adult world in every sense”.

Good on yer, Andy!

Of course she does not go far enough.

Perhaps one of you would be kind enough to pass on the following suggestions so that she might take her laudable ambition to its proper conclusion. I would do it myself, but she scares the crap out of me.

Let the children slaughter the animals themselves. Have them shown how to sharpen the knives, discuss the best method of draining the blood. Make burgers out of the giblets. Make musical instruments out of the bones. (I was going to say make headmistresses out of the shit, but I am frightened of Ms Charman). Of course, this will not apply to vegetarian children, or “cissies” as they are known in Ms Charman’s school. They will be forced to pick the hand-reared peas that they have been growing at the back of the school prison, and pluck them from their pods, without anaesthetic.

Let’s have some marketing classes. Each hour have one class of children go round the school interrupting the other classes by trying to sell them crap that they don’t need.

Teach them about capitalism. Get them to hand over 45% of their pocket money to the Charman Investment Fund. When they leave school leaving age, they may get as much as 38% of it back, after tax.

Teach them about careers. Get them to do something entirely without merit, and then arbitrarily select one in twenty each term to be ‘made redundant’ from the class and get an “F”.

Teach them about journalism. Get the teachers to tell them a bunch of lies each day. (I suspect old Andrea will already have a good handle on this one).

For the school trip, hand out some Kalashnikovs and send the little loves to some third world country to see how many children they can murder there. Call it “democratisation awareness”.

Have a listen to Ms Charman, and unless you have children about to be put into her care, I defy you not to laugh.

I was struck by this sentence in the article:
“Mother Jo Davis said it was a disgrace that the sheep fed by hand by her eight-year-old daughter Megan was to be slaughtered and sold.” Delete the first 15 words and then you have a school policy that really reflects life in the world that we have made for ourselves.