Not a good move by the school.

100358503-14910485-This-is-the-letter-that-was-sent-to-parents-ahead-of-Culture-Day-a-37-17526633842.jpg (634×930)

I don't think a union Jack dress is traditional cultural attire.
But sending someone home over that seems overly harsh given the event is supposed to be fun.

Don't know if it's true that she was told that only other cultures get to celebrate, since the only source of that so far seems to be a publication with a bad track record. But if true, that wasn't clear in the letter they sent out. Nor should that be a thing since its a celebration.

It could also be because in her letter she was supposedly planning to talk about how "we some times only hear about other cultures" and "it can feel like being British doesn’t count as a culture, just because it’s the majority".

This can be both a valid feeling, and come off as politisizing the event.

To that I think the reason it can feel that way is because we spend significantly more time learning about our own history and culture in core subjects, and by living through it, than we do of any one other culture. It's not uncommon to learn about almost your entire royal lineage, while for other countries we focus on the most significant figures. We have national holidays to celebrate, etc.

So when learning about others, effort is needed. Which can be misconstrued as feeling more important. Especially when ours is one, and there are many more countries out there.

Yeah it had some overtones of an AllLivesMatter vs BlackLivesMatter distraction. But that's not what this was, celebrating cultural diversity, nothing to do with racism, which it has now basically blown up to. 

Her speech does show her parent's political grievances and also explains how this blew up so much (as in her dad went to the media, the other kids we still know nothing about) But I doubt the school screened the speeches beforehand? She was clearly rejected because of attire, not her speech. 

In the original Sun article

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/35843814/school-banned-my-daughter-for-union-jack-dress/

"But the grade-A student was stopped by teachers who gave her the option of wearing a second-hand uniform instead. Courtney refused before her dad Stuart Field, 47, arrived to collect her from Bilton School in Rugby, Warwickshire."

Last night, he slammed the school for “virtue signalling” and said he had since received a grovelling apology.

The dad of five told The Sun: “Her head of year bizarrely said that if she had worn a suit of armour or a nurse’s outfit, she probably would have been allowed. It’s ridiculous.

It was not about the speech, it was definitely the dress. But why was the kid wearing traditional farm clothes rejected (if true).

And yes "we some times only hear about other cultures" I very much doubt the British school system only teaches foreign history!



Plus celebrating the Spice Girls as British 'culture' kinda yuck lol. The Who and the Rolling Stones started popularizing wearing the flag.
https://thegenealogyofstyle.wordpress.com/2014/04/26/rocking-the-union-jack/


Anyway British pop culture is British culture is culture period. Traditional dress is questionable but these are kids, let them celebrate whatever they like.

Weird. When I went to school in the south of England during 2008/2009. we had all sorts of dress up days - "dress like a pirate day", etc. Once, one of my buddies turned up to school dressed as Adolf Hitler, the teachers weren't happy, but he didn't get sent home.

It's almost as if vilifying and discriminating against the majority of a country's population makes that majority resentful and pushes them away.

Who would have thought?

Students were told to not wear national flags, but still poorly handled.
Anyway I better nope out of here as these days discussion of British politics very quickly gives me the ick.

Its a common theme that I have seen in many countries including my birth country (Brazil). Politicians being elected to do what people want and then going on the exact opposite direction, which then pushes people more into the extremes. It always happened at some extent as you cant keep all your campaign promises, and some promises are made exactly to not be fulfilled, but it seems to me the disconnection between what people want and the agenda being pushed by politicians never been so wide in my lifetime (44).

What I have seen by tory government in the last 8 years, the period I have been in UK if baffling. The vast, unquestionable, supreme majority of british people, left and right, do not want mass migration. Only 9% wants it. 74% thinks it needs to decrease heavily, be net zero, or actually start sending people away to decrease the population. Yet look at what hapenned/happens. And Starmer is going in the same direction.

At the same time, Labour voters do want to see more investment, more spending, reforms on Nymbis, University Fees and other issues, and until now they are dissatisfied as they see Starmer as being almost a Tory.

Its no surprise people are pushed to the extremes, especially when the extremes more and more sound just like a real conservative or labour party would normally say or do. People have nowhere to go.

The avg age of politicians in the UK (in the house of commons) is 50 with an upwards trend, generation X. Their parents are all facing pension troubles with the ageing population.

https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/key-issues-parliament-2015/social-change/ageing-population/
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/the-uks-changing-population/

Without immigration population would decline in the UK and the only thing these politicians can think of is bring more people into the country, preferably those that have many children, who can work and pay taxes for their state pensions.

It's all self serving... This is what happens if you design your social security on ever growing population. Many western countries face the same issue.

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2017/11/these-animations-show-the-western-world-is-rapidly-ageing/




https://rajawali.hks.harvard.edu/articles/a-rapidly-aging-world-and-the-awaiting-demographic-implosion/

Significantly increased labor migration will be essential for aging societies, and not least for Europe, to function. Closed borders only exacerbate the problem. While there is no shortage of young people in the world — Africa’s median age is 19 — the trend of declining birth rates in more and more countries must be reversed. No developed country offers a successful model for this.


Shut the borders and work until you die is the alternative? Pension age of 71 is already forecast for the UK with the current immigration.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/feb/05/uk-state-pension-age-will-soon-need-to-rise-to-71-say-experts


The young pay for the old social security schemes don't work anymore, a complete overhaul of the current system is needed to suit declining populations. As much as people complain "They're taking our jobs", in fact they're paying for your pension and elderly healthcare.

Not surprising at all. The ones who scream the loudest about inclusivity, who all make a big show about being tolerant and inclusive, are always so intolerant in actuality.

The problem is what happens 50 or 100 or years down when the local population has been bred out and replaced by imported foreigners?

Societies change, it has happened many times before. The world will go on, countries will adapt. In the end we're all human. We're all in this together.

And it will take quite a bit longer for the the local population to be bred out, nvm newcomers become integrated with the local population and adopt similar values over time. (Unless you isolate them)

Still new ways have to be found to sustain stable or declining populations as the Earth population can't keep growing forever. The capitalist model of running a country is not sustainable.