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After School Clubs get a Make Over

19/1/2012

4 Comments

 
Picture
image: Renata Alves dos Anjos
A school in Leeds is under fire for offering make up lessons to its year 10 pupils. The tutorials cover how to make-up for a night out and what is appropriate for an interview.

The idea behind this pilot scheme is led by The Model Education and aims to boost self-confidence and help students give a good first impression.

Staff at Mount St Mary’s Catholic High School, where the classes are taking place are quick to point out the positive. Deputy Head Sue Carluccio told the Mirror: “I’m a maths teacher and wouldn’t expect a child to be able to solve an algebraic equation without being taught first how to do it. Why is it any different with this?”

The Family Education Trust commented on the scheme saying: “At a time when there is growing public concern about the sexualisation of children and young people, it is irresponsible for schools to provide make-up lessons... The fact that some of the pupils asked for these lessons is no defence.”

Of course at a time of record unemployment highs anything that gets these pupils ahead in the jobs market is not to be so readily dismissed.

The fact that these tutorials were requested by pupils of Mount St Mary’s Catholic High School in Leeds suggests they are proactive and enterprising.

The classes are held out of school hours and all attendees have been given parental permission to take part.

Schools all over East Yorkshire have received The Model Education. Corpus Christi Catholic College, also in Leeds, used the company as a way to teach self-esteem to the students. The college were concerned the students were talented and intelligent but simply did not know how to present themselves.

Run by Matt Bates and Sean Hopwoods, who are both models, the Model Education classes feature mock interview situations.  The make-up lessons are, I fear, a natural extension of how best to present yourself professionally.

Surely these after school lessons are preferable to shoving the apparently inappropriately apparelled on BBC 3’s Snog Marry Avoid? To be publicly scrubbed clean, shamed and have a beanie hat shoved over their hair extensions?

Kate
4 Comments
Abby
19/1/2012 02:54:38 pm

Hi Kate. While the juxtaposition of 'Snog Marry Avoid' and these classes seems reasonable, my fear is much like yours - 'how best to present yourself professionally'. This is fraught with issues for women and increasingly very young girls. Self-esteem - a good thing, using 'make up' to achieve it...? Do you know if 'Model Education' raise the fundamentals of why this approach to building esteem and presenting yourself is seen as necessary?

Reply
Squeamish Kate
19/1/2012 09:54:35 pm

Hi Abby,
You're right, those partaking in the make up tutorials should not be presented as a genuine method to achieve self esteem.
As I understand it, in the usual self esteem lessons with Model Education the leaders enact 3 interviews, one in which the 'interviewee' is shy, another cocky and in the next confident and they discuss with the class which interviewee was most appropriate. I am happy to get behind that, but the make up lessons are perhaps only worth a mention as in 'look smart, minimal make up'.

Reply
sue
19/1/2012 04:30:40 pm

I would like to know if the course is girls only? Surely boys need to 'present themselves' too.

Reply
Squeamish Kate
19/1/2012 09:54:59 pm

They do courses for girls and boys but they do make up lessons just for girls.

Reply



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