If you Can't Take the Heat, Get Out of the Classroom!

In case you missed the news, the weather, the actual conditions outside… It is HOT!

Now I don’t mind the heat, even as a natural ginger. Maybe it is because I spent a summer working the kitchens of Sydney. I love it. I can work in the coolest room with all the fans if I wish to. This is not always the case in schools.

Once upon a time, I was asked to observe an English literature class for year 11s. It was September and it was very warm. The windows which filled one wall looked out over verdant sports fields where other students were frolicking happily in the sunshine. The class I was observing were analysing “My Last Duchess.” Actually, that’s not true. The teacher was performing some sort of commentary whilst she subjected Browning’s poem to a vivisection. The teacher wore a light summer blouse and a loose-fitting skirt. The students wore dark trousers or long skirts, shirts, ties, blazers, and sweated, visible patina of perspiration glazing each and every brow. The teacher sat in the focus of an oscillating fan; the students benefitted from a vastly rarefied effect (inverse-square-rule-seeing-as-you-asked…).

I will never forget how she taught the analysis. It went like this, “… ‘half-flush dies’… that’s a metaphor, highlight in pink… ‘how shall I say?’ ... rhetorical question, highlight in green…” All of this in a monotone drone. The combination of heat, suffocating clothing, and a teaching technique that has instilled in me, a poetry lover, an unwarranted hatred for that particular poem, surely can’t have been effective in reaching those students? Can it? I may be wrong. I doubt it.

But it is the heat I want to talk about. When the mercury rises why is it OK for teachers to dress for summer while students sweat in uniform? Answers on a postcard please!

But there is a bigger problem. What about when a heat wave coincides with exams? Who is at their best sitting in a stuffy hall, the heat climbing as the pressure increases? Why do so many schools insist on full uniform for exams? Also, what about when Ramadan falls during GCSEs in the middle of a heat wave? I’ve seen that happen too! Devout students, abstaining from food during the hours of daylight, whilst sweating gallons, in full uniform, trying to perform as well as they are able in GCSE and A-Levels!

I do have an idea. Move exams to winter.

That and introduce some parity between dress codes for student and staff.