Maths Equipment

WARNING: this post may contain triggers for self-harm.

It arrived in my inbox earlier than usual this year but it was familiar from previous years.  Dear parent, please make sure your children bring the following equipment to their maths lessons... pen, pencil, rubber, set-square, protractor, sharpener.

I agonized over it yet again - should I speak out this time?  Who but the most neurotic health and safety officer would believe that there could possibly be a problem with basic Maths equipment?

Four years ago I would have gawped in astonishment at the suggestion that you could harm yourself with Maths equipment.  Short of stabbing yourself with a pair of compasses, or the pointy end of a set-square, there seems little more innocuous than a school geometry set.

But over the last few years, in our family, pencil sharpeners have become the devil within.  Inside even the cheapest pencil sharpener, protected only by the most fragile of plastic casings, is a perfectly serviceable blade.  And they are handed out in their hundreds of thousands - in countless cheap pencil case sets in stationers and corner shops, or in souvenir shops branded with logos.  When Julie started using pencil sharpeners - not for sharpening pencils - we soon found out, with a shock, just how many of the things we harboured in our own house.  All those years of harmless collection of back-to-school sets, or My Little Pony stationery sets, meant that there were dozens of them, long after all the pencils  they were meant to serve had been chewed up and thrown out.  They were tucked down the back of drawers, forgotten abandoned on shelves, in the corners of pencil cases.  They are so small, so easily overlooked, and - until they meet Julie - so nearly indestructible.

There are no pencil sharpeners in our house now.  In the end we had to root every single one out: sort through every drawer, shelf, pencil case, box and pocket, and bin the lot.  It was a huge task, and now if we buy a stationery kit, we take out the sharpeners first and dispose of them before we get through the door.  In fact we do have one sharpener - a big old-fashioned mill sharpener, like the one teachers used to keep on their desks - and this sharpener, which has no blades, keeps all the pencils in our house sharp.

But how to find a sharpener for Duncan to take to maths lessons?  Did it look idiotic to ask the school for some flexibility on this point?

Eventually I summoned up the courage and contacted the head of maths.  Did they realize this might be a problem if you had a teenage self-harmer in the house?  If I just sent Duncan in with plenty of sharp pencils in his bag, surely this would be sufficient for his lessons.  But could staff please refrain from giving him a sharpener?

They were, of course, immensely nice about it.  Duncan will not have to take a sharpener to maths, and nor will Julie.  Will they think twice before listing it next year or will it remain uniquely our family's problem - the family who can't have any pencil sharpeners.