ALL businesses are vulnerable to legal action. St Bede's College in Canterbury is discovering that the hard way with parents filing an injunction in the High Court to get their kids back on a rowing team, after they were axed as a punishment.
Tomorrow's Schools, which ushered in the concept of boards of trustees and the novelty of parents and non-professionals being able to govern a school, certainly paved the way for parents having a direct and positive influence on the culture of a school, in line with the themes and values of a community. As a board of trustee member myself, I like the concept, although the demarcation between management and governance can be tricky.
But the St Bede's situation is a warped, angry situation; a nasty example of parents undermining a school's ability and right to do a professional job.
It is interesting that the pupils involved, or even the parents, appeared not to see the fundamental conflict between the pride of representing your school and your classmates in a sporting event, and trashing the school's pride by bringing its name into disrepute.
What it suggests to me is a lack of pride in general, and certainly a fundamental lack in understanding consequences.
Excitement, hormones, self-interest, and certainly self-indulgence, might well play havoc with a young man at 16 or 17. We've all "done stuff", you might say.
But part of becoming a decent and thoughtful person in society is not only an appreciation of consequences, but an acceptance of them as well. Many of us have done things we remember to this day, and perhaps not with regret. If you got caught, well, you got punished appropriately, and you put your head down for a few days.
St Bede's College is a big player in the education stakes. They take their work seriously. Breaching security at an airport is a criminal act. It is fortunate that it can be treated as thoughtlessness, rather than a crime, but it needed to be punished. A ban was a professional decision, relatively harmless, and entirely appropriate.
Court action is everyone's right, but only when it's used responsibly.