I don’t buy a newspaper unless my kiddo has a papier-mâché project in the works.

It’s bad enough that the price keeps growing as the papers themselves continue to shrink, or that they don’t seem to be spending much (if any) of that increased revenue on copyediting. The main reason why I wouldn’t even bother lining our budgies’ birdcage with any of the three major papers is that—with the exception of a few notable instances—they generally don’t seem interested in producing newsworthy stories. Most days, I can get a better sense of what’s happening at home and abroad from Twitter (no, I won’t be calling it X), which is itself a platform in decline.

All of this is why, when I heard rumours about yet another alleged case of hair discrimination, I didn’t have high hopes for what I’d find in the major media. I wasn’t disappointed. Or… I was disappointed but I wasn’t surprised in the least.

Now, I’m just a humble blogger. I eh no big journalist or nuttin, but if two parents came to me with a story of hair discrimination at a particular school and I decided to report on that story, it seems to me that there are some fundamental things I would include in that story in order to make it newsworthy.

For starters, I would do a little research into the school itself to see if maybe it had a history of discriminating against students due to their hairstyles. Then, maybe I’d give myself a little refresher on the wider pattern of hair discrimination (in school and otherwise) dating back decades in this place. You know, so I could place the story in its proper context.

When I began reaching out to the various parties for comment, I wouldn’t be surprised by the school’s reticence; after all, they probably remember how the last high-profile instance went down. So then I’d move on to verifying the story in other ways, perhaps by finding out who the parents contacted at the Ministry of Education and reaching out to them to see if they’d be willing to talk about the situation. Did they speak to someone at the Ministry head office or the relevant School Supervisor? What did they say? What avenues, if any, did they suggest for resolution?

When I finally got around to reaching out to the Minister of Education herself, I wouldn’t bother asking her about this specific situation, given that there is absolutely no reason to believe that she would know anything about it. Because, as a journalist, I would know that the average citizen contacting a government ministry for assistance would never be transferred to the line minister. In fact, I’d know that the line minister would only become aware of such a matter after it blew up into a national news story. So, instead of wasting her valuable ministerial time (and my journalistic time) that way, I might pose questions that are right up her alley, such as:

1. Are schools allowed to suspend students without documentation (as is alleged in this case)?
2. What is a parent’s recourse in such a situation?
3. How does the Ministry of Education assist parents in cases where they believe that a school has breached the brand-new National Schools Hair Code?
4. What, if any, are the consequences to a school if the Ministry determines that they’ve breached the code?

Now, it’s quite possible that the Minister might decline to answer one or more of those questions, but as they say, the absence of an answer is itself an answer. That’s especially true when you’re talking to the person responsible for leading the Ministry with responsibility for the management and oversight of all schools from primary to tertiary.

Again, I doh wuk at no national paper or nuttin, but it seems to me that that kind of reporting might have produced a story that was not only helpful to its subjects (who turned to the media for just that) but also anyone else reading it. It might even inspire some progress in this neverending stuggle to get our nation’s schools to shift their focus from what’s on their students’ heads to what’s inside of it.

If nothing else, it certainly would’ve been a more interesting read.