To the best of my knowledge, I don’t have children. However, if I did I’m sure I would instil in them exactly the sort of values that would inevitably lead to them becoming the type of person to make unwarranted references to the Geneva Convention in even the most low-key of contexts. So, naturally when I saw that an 11 year-old in the UK recently declared that their teacher had contravened the writ of the Geneva Convention by using ‘collective punishment’, I became briefly concerned that I had accidentally sired a human as frivolously pedantic as myself. A few phone calls and some tremendous insistence from my lawyer that extensive genetic tests be taken – eventually culminating in an appearance on an un-aired episode of The Jeremy Kyle Show – later, and I can confirm that I remain offspringless.
So, thankfully, I bear no connection to the youngster, beyond the fact that I am about to comment extensively on her excellent use of a feedback form in school. The girl in question, an Ava Morrison-Bell from the UK, had been provided with a feedback form by her teacher, presumably so that the learning experience for herself and her fellow classmates could be improved, and not so the teacher could be accused of being an international war criminal.
Her father, upon seeing the completed feedback form, took a photo of it and posted it to Twitter. And, Twitter, presuming him not to be one of the growing number of tragic people online who pretend to be children and write faux ‘adorable’ notes in order to gain internet notoriety, lapped this whole thing up.
My daughter actually submitted this feedback at school. Not sure if I should ground her or buy her ice cream… pic.twitter.com/4v8Gjb9riv
— Mason Cross (@MasonCrossBooks) May 25, 2017
This Ava Morrison-Bell is clearly, even at the age of 11, a mover and a shaker, a lady who’ll get things done. So much so, that despite this Tweet having been sent out last year, I have been so impressed by how ferociously fastidious a child she is that I have felt compelled to bring this back into public knowledge.
For an 11 year-old to have a passable understanding of what the Geneva Convention is, is simply astounding; even despite the fact that she has perhaps failed to grasp that it is to legislate for international warfare as opposed to mediating classroom disputes. Given that I lack neither the desire nor the journalistic integrity to actually look up the particulars of whatever Geneva Convention article she may be referencing, which prohibits the use of collective punishment, I’m gonna go ahead and give her the benefit of the doubt and presume that it is covered by everybody’s favourite convention from a Swiss metropolis and that we should expect the teacher to be making an appearance in The Hague before too long.
H/T: Bored Panda
