Brutally honest opinions needed please

[Catwoman]

Can I have some input on this article about the Muslim schoolgirl who won a court case to wear traditional robes in class. Sent it off to a few titles but no reply as yet so is it crap or are they slow?

Don’t just sit there; your human rights are being compromised

This country is diverse, and multicultural. It is also full of people who just won’t do as they’re told.

I once got put into isolation for wearing jeans to school. It was a dark, damp room at the top of the headmaster’s building; claustrophobic, creaky, and redolent of teenage sweat. It was right on the edge of Dartmoor, and with the little imagination befitting a bored teenager you could almost believe you were in prison for some heinous crime, and the heavy footsteps coming angrily down the corridor were those of a sadistic six-foot-sixty monster, not plump old Mrs Proust (no relation) coming to tell me I’m not special or different and consequently have no excuse not to wear prescription trousers.

Admittedly, my entire purpose whilst at school was to irritate teachers who thought they knew more than me, and more importantly, to not be at school. Nevertheless, I deemed this treatment grossly unfair, not least because I had to change into a pair of uniform trousers from lost property that pinched slightly on the waist and smelt of boys.

So, recent news of a young Muslim girl’s battle to wear religious dress in school has got me thinking – if only I had pursued it at the time, I could have taken them to court, revolutionised the school uniform, made them see that there was a point and identity in what may appear to the ignorant as hormone-driven rule-breaking, that I shouldn’t be penalised just because I was different. I could have fought for my human rights.

And that’s not the only UN convention my school was in breach of. I was told off once for talking in assembly, and made to publicly apologise (in a lost property jumper) to twelve hundred students. As if spots and large breasts weren’t enough to contend with at the age of 14. It was humiliating, one could almost say torturous. But I stood by and did nothing as my freedom of speech was compromised.

Lest this lesson is lost amidst political furore and fear of racial agitation, I must stress to any distressed teenagers trapped in the emotional throws of a disallowed identity: stand up against your oppressors, don’t let anybody tell you what to do, and never – sorry, what was that? You do that already? Oh, sorry, my mistake.