STRICTER TEACHERS may wish to display in their classrooms copies of a list of items and types of behaviour that recently have been banned by schools in the Swiss village of Zufikon.
The 17 banned objects include hair gel, baseball caps, torn jeans, exercise shoes, flip-flops, skateboards, MP3 players and mobile phones.
Several of these items are also outlawed by many British schools.
Miniskirts, visible underwear and “bodily cleavages” are also on the list.
The forms of behaviour that have been banned are stricter still.
Woe betide any pupils in Zufikon who are caught with their hands in their pockets, who greet teachers by their first names, stay seated when spoken to by staff or - perish the thought - speak in incomplete sentences.
The SonntagsBlick newspaper reported that the rules were drafted for the schools by the Swiss People’s Party, the most conservative of the four parties co-governing the country.
Ueli Maurer, the party leader, said that students who allowed themselves “to go to seed” revealed a lot about their characters.
