Editorial: Boys in skirts a flight of fancy

Don Farmer.

Climate is not the only thing rapidly changing in this world of ours, as a perusal of recent newspapers would confirm.

A travel agency is predicting four-hour supersonic flights from Auckland to London within 20 years, which will push my travel timeline a bit but you never know your luck.

Should the flights come to pass, then what a boon they will be.

As one who has flown to London several times I can attest the flight is a challenging one for most of us who travel in "cattle class". Sitting in a seat barely adequate to carry the human form for upwards of 24 hours is a trial, but one you just have to set your mind to if you want to see faraway places.

To be able to zip to London in little more time than it now takes to get to Sydney would be a remarkable advance.

Couple that with the imminent arrival of driver-less cars that, they say, would be near impossible to crash and you have a world that hardly resembles the one we now live in.

Those examples aside another sea-change caught my eye last week, albeit one of less magnitude than supersonic flights to London.

A Sydney state secondary school is now allowing boys to wear skirts to school and to use the girls' toilets if they so desire.

They can refer to themselves as being of either gender and likewise girls can attend school in a boys' uniform.

Simply because I don't want to have to field howls of protest I am going to refrain from commenting further, or from passing any sort of judgment on the school's decision.

All I will allow myself to do is stick to the undeniable fact that it is a far cry from my own schooldays.

I could not imagine myself, or any other boy in school for that matter, arriving in a skirt at Greytown Primary School or Kuranui College unless it was a prank or perhaps to fulfil a role in a school play.

As for attempting to use the girls' toilets, well you can scream sexist if you like but that little escapade would probably have seen a boy chastised the first time - or caned - and expelled thereafter.