20
My Green School
Lauren explains that you can get inside the hedges in the front garden and there is a tunnel that runs from one end to the other. She says she likes being there because she is ‘close to nature’... I ask if we can go inside and have a look. She seems tentative. She says that she doesn’t think they are allowed. Rita is also with us... Rita tries to encourage me to go inside. The tunnel looks too small for me to fit! Lauren tells me again that she thinks they are not allowed. Rita and Lauren ask the lunchtime supervisor... who says that they cannot go inside. I ask the supervisor why the children are not allowed inside the hedge. She says that the children do things that they are not allowed to. ‘Like what?’, I ask. They may hide in there, she tells me, or bully other children. Later during the lunchbreak I see a boy dart into the hedge. He forcefully shakes the hedge when he is inside. He darts back out again... Later I tell Lauren that I saw a boy running in the hedge. She tells me that boys always break the rules. I ask her if she thinks they just forget about the rules because they are playing. She is very clear that they don’t, she says that they do it on purpose. She says that they also playfight a lot and they are not meant to do that (Fieldnotes, May 2012). In the playground the girls discipline the boys using the ‘cold pole’. This is a galvanised steel column that holds up the staircase leading to the green roof. The boys have to roll up their sleeves and hug the pole. This is a punishment for boys who have not shown ‘respect to the girls’ or when they have been ‘too rough’. In this space the girls consider the boys as rule-breakers who need to be managed. However, girls do also play in the planting beds, especially during games of hide and seek.
The Cold Pole