Odd title, isn’t it?
I picked up on an interview on Radio 4 this morning about purple protractors.
Firstly, I couldn’t really believe that BBC Radio 4 (you can hear the news item hereRadio 4), that bastion of all that is good in broadcasting had lowered itself to discuss protractors, and purple ones at that!
It seems that this is the latest fad – I won’t raise it to any level by calling it a trend, or even trendy – but apparently this is really important. Ranking behind the most up to date trainers, the best and latest branded schoolbag (backpack or whatever they call it nowadays) . Oh, and by the way did you know that girls take handbags to school?
I know I am an old dinosaur and no doubt very shortly to become extinct, but am I really living in Britain in 2009? Maybe I time shifted to Oz or Wibble (that’s a Blackadder IV reference for those aficionados amongst you), or maybe its just getting crazy out there.
In my day a transparent protractor was what we had – you could see through to measure exactly the angle on the paper.
Anyway, for those of you who would like one,
Here is a purple protractor!
The schools are partly to blame by not enforcing a straightforward uniform policy(so-called because then everyone looks the same, and there is less likely to be bullying over “trainers”) and if they really must, produce simple unfashionable maths kits to use. After all school is about learning not about being a fashionista (my word, I think), and although every child should be treated as an individual and his or her individual needs catered for in terms of their learning and development ( I agree that is a good ethos), that doesn’t mean they can behave like a celebrity or for that matter dress like them.
Focus on learning: schools are seats of learning not fashion shows.
JohnF
NGM's blog 
Any chance it’s a see-through purple protractor? That would make at least slightly more sense, though if not that’s pretty rubbish! I can still remember what it was like to be at school and I’m pretty sure we didn’t get picked on for our protractors, just our looks, shoes, trainers, hair, etc. etc.
BTW “fashionista” is already a perfectly acceptable word in English, not sure about Italian though.
I think it might be transparent and I agree – I wouldn’t have thought protractors would be an issue for anyone maybe except the fashioniste (he he!)
JohnF
Oh, and after I commented here I hunted down the audio of the BBC Radio 4 interview you were talking about (well I think I found the right thing). What I found much more remarkable about that was the subsequent discussion of whether the woman was going to allow her daughter to take a handbag to school rather than a satchel (N.B. “satchel” was her word, not mine). As if that should ever even BECOME a possibility! 😀