Dean’s Blog: ‘Cool or sad?’

Having been amazingly immature and, in addition, startlingly nerdy as a kid, I was, of course, never considered to be cool. I distinctly remember the nearest I ever got at my prestigious and brutal English public school was that St Valentine’s Day, in grade 8 when the Head Prefect, publicly distributing the post at breakfast, handed me a huge and multicoloured envelope drenched to saturation point in a girl’s perfume that polluted the olfactory perception of everyone in a five mile radius. And I was plunged into that past when one of you talked to me about middle aged teachers being considered cool by adolescents. ‘Sad’, I said. ‘In touch,’ you said.

Sever the umbilical
The whole ‘cool’ issue is complex yet simple, important yet trivial, reassuring yet divisive, a statement of individuality in the growing child and yet provocative of a set of actions targeting conformism. It is obvious why when we consider the psychology and biology of puberty where contradiction makes sense, random is logical and the need to sever the umbilical from adult restraint so ‘I’ can express individuality hits a bunch of peer groupers in the same social environment at the same time inevitably, therefore, doing the same thing. And, it is, of course, if allowed to spread uncontrolled like a pandemic, vastly expensive for parents.

‘No!’ is amazingly effective
For cool requires without question next model consoles, iphones, ipods, nanospeakers of the latest capacity and design, trainers, jeans, bags and T shirts with the correct (and genuine - don’t even think about replicas) designer label despite their wearers apparently growing four centimetres a day. A well known electronic retailer holds spares for as little as four years now on expensive micro electronic gadgets and then advises distraught customers to throw it away and buy cheaper for the next three years or maybe it will only be two. Post adolescence, this conformism morphs into membership of correct and astronomically bad value for money clubs and bars with the correct set of oversized, overpowered and overpriced wheels in that year’s hue parked outside. But then at least they, not you, are financing. ‘No!’ is amazingly effective and one can repeat it pretty often without fatigue. Of course, you have to take some antidote against the huge guilt trip they then try to send you on, threatening that major parental nightmare of their being alone, rejected, invisible and derided. After a short time of retreat in Fortress Parents we can reach a reasonably sane compromise that is nearly always accepted when placed with finality on the table.

Budget line
A couple of years ago at ICS there was a refreshing reaction to cool by the students themselves which led them to analyse all that was currently de rigueur. They were then seen not dressed in or attached to or communicating through or carrying or walking on anything remotely fashionable. Migros’ Budget Line was in and its carrier bags replaced over styled backpacks that shout form over function designer statement. I encouraged this movement wholeheartedly and I would again. Indeed, for a while, membership of this group was cool.