It's not a particularly history based post today, or maybe I just woke up in a bad mood. But whilst watching breakfast news this morning there were two stories about inclusivity in the news that really did **** me off. The first story was about a school in Scotland where a photography company had taken photos of children in their classes, a yearly tradition over here. The school then makes a bit of money by selling the pictures onto the parents. What has happened here is that in one class there was a class photo taken with all the children present, and then there was a second photo available to parents with those children with 'special needs', I presume airbrushed out. Therefore parents could buy a photo with all the children present or one without any children deemed to have 'special needs'.
The second story was about a boy being banned from a trampoline park for a party with his friends. The reason he was not allowed to partake was because he had down syndrome. Now as someone who'll always stick up for the underdog, these two stories really did hack me off. In this day and age, we should not be allowing this ignorance, stupidity and prejudice to happen, especially to children. How do we help children learn that life is for everyone and there should be no discrimination to anyone whether it's their sex, race, ability or sexuality. I mean there is no difference to playing in a trampoline park whether your down syndrome or not, this lad was perfectly capable of doing anything. This stupid discrimination needs to stop, and for people to grow up or get educated.