to think that out of four houses in a school, two could carry the names of women and they needn't all be white?

[DrSeuss]

The secondary school I teach in is in one of the least diverse areas of Britain. Folk here can be very insular. Nice but insular. The area has one of the lowest take ups of Languages in the country. For some, a trip to the city five miles away is a big adventure. You get the idea.

Our school needed four new names for its four new houses. We now have three dead white males and one dead white female as names. None of them is in themselves objectionable and they have to be dead so as to avoid a situation where a house winds up carrying the name of someone we would rather it did not.

However, three men, one woman? All white? Surely we can split the genders two and two and surely we can have someone who wasn't a WASP?

Do Punch and Judy still hit each other? I've never quite got my head round that

Norfolk here, last school was places in Norfolk of historical I terest. New school is spaceships so endevour is one, Apollo is another and I don't remember the other two.

The nature of the area, not the store of the area. Oops.

bet it starts with winston church hill and ends with margaret thatcher

perhaps the school thinks whoever the house names are are worthy of the names, our school has REALLY scottish words for the houses I dont think people really think about them much

flatpackhamster

I didn't link the list, I linked the profiles of those two people in particular.

Of course it doesn't matter. But important causes like this are how you prove your superior leftie credentials on Mumsnet. "Wow, look at the ignorant white people failing to celebrate diversity!" shouts the OP. Muttering from the peanut gallery by the Guardian-reading latte-sippers of Brighton and Camden. Everyone agrees that ordinary people are stupid and thick unless they live down the road from an Ethiopian basketwork collective. Then it's straight on to pick up Jocasta and Tristram from the comprehensive school that doesn't select by ability (because that would be elitist) but only on the basis that you can afford a million pound house in the catchment area

That's getting a bit tired now.

It does matter...to some people.

I am as far removed from your 'latte sipping yummy mummy of Camden' as can be BTW.

Sounds like it's not all of Norfolk then!

A clue as to our location-our area had Men of Steel long before Superman!

The names aren't founders, they aren't even local.

I would have liked Seacole.

Call me pretentious all you like, I believe that it says to girls at our school that, on a certain level, men get to dominate.

Norfolk school DS went to houses were..
Waveney
Bure
Wensum
Another river I can't remember

My school was in the NE all girls-the houses were: Abbess Hilda , Grace Darling , Elizabeth Browning and Florence Nightingale. We had fetching metal badges-rectangle bisected diagonally-AH was black/white GD was blue/white EB was green/yellow and FN was red/white.
We were never sure why EB was the only one not to have a white half but they always did best at everything :)

Ours were called after some of the Celtic heroes that rampaged about the place, it was pretty cool. They were all men but to be fair I would have been pretty depressed to end up in Deirdre house

Best school house names ever ....
Whitbread, Courage, Bells, Bass, Carlsberg, Guinness
DH absolutely cracked up when the head got them line up
"right I want a straight line of Whibread over there ~ line up properly Guinness ~ Carlsberg be quiet"

DCs school they are named after ships.

Jubelteen
Yare?
I know a school that uses them

The 7 houses at my school were famous Mancunian landowners.

Often up here the houses are named after lochs, rivers, or munros/hills.

Saves arguments!

Gibber yes Yare, thank you, no need to Google "Rivers in Norfolk" now

DCs school has an immensely tedious list of Great People, unexceptional but dull and with a whiff of tokenism. I'd rather they went local by including their two fabulously famous ex pupils (one male one female) and making up the numbers with another couple of very famous very local (ie walking distance) local residents instead.

If they are named after significant historical figures then it is likely that they will be white me and historically those have been the most influential people in society. It would be preposterous to choose one black person as tat would suggest that 25% of historically significant Britons are black, they are not, nor are 50% female.

Ours were named after stately homes in Norfolk (outs my secondary school)

No Pag I'm not hysterical but thanks for sharing the helpful pointer to another worthwhile thread.

Old school kelling, winterton, blakeney, and some others.

Current endeaver, appollo, viking and discovery.

Primary school they are done by colour, red, green, blue and yellow.

Oh apparently they are named Faraday, Darwin, Einstein, and newton so all men...famous scientists, hmmm

My dh had a house at school called Queens!

I'd rather all the people school houses were named after were significant and admirable people rather then have tokenism.

This country is a white country. It has become more diverse in recent years and that's a good thing, but that's no reason to completely forget the fact that historically, the vast majority of inhabitants of this country have been, and currently are, white.

I went to an all girls school that had four houses named after men. I can't say I ever gave it a second thought, let alone think that men were going to dominate my entire existence.

History is fluid isn't it? The people who were celebrated at the time weren't necessarily the same people who would be celebrated today. As the school is changing house names, it makes sense to include some non-white, non-male figures. It's no biggie, hardly PC gorn mad to suggest that!

Historically, women who made great achievements weren't acknowledged in their lifetimes, but that's no reason to write them out of history. Whatever the mix of the school, I'm sure the pupils would be equally inspired by female or minority ethnic figures! Nothing to get frothy over, is it?

We have four dead local dignitaries with links to the school.

All white, one female (although her contribution seems to have consisted of a timely bung in her will at a point when the school was on its uppers).

We could have famous alumni, but that'd be one cast member of 'Allo Allo' & a minor cricketer...erm...think that's it actually!