Hundreds of thousands of us have been slaves to the lanyard for many years now. Increasing numbers of school sixth forms are also being lassoed to step up safeguarding, and surely it is only a matter of time before all Year 10s and 11s get the cord and ID card treatment - they may be in uniform but what kind of proof is that? World of Lanyard is coming to us all.
I like to imagine that the relentless rise of the lanyard has brought untold riches to a God-fearing lanyard-weaving community in the remote Scottish Highlands. I like to think of them still operating their rickety looms in tiny old cottages and sending their lanyard batches downstream for shipment via Amazon or whoever. These people have always enjoyed a solid customer base - seamen, pirates and the military, in particular - but the noble “yarder” has surely never known a golden age quite like the present.
Hoist the lanyard
Yet despite the fortune spent on them, there has never been any leadership, vision or training over our wearing and use of the lanyard. As a result, most staff have just passively let the cord and ID card hang over them and done nothing with it for years. This is a terrible waste and an insult to the lanyard’s swashbuckling history. It is time - to use a popular phrase - we took back control. Here are five examples of excellent practice that I have seen or adopted myself. Take or leave.
1. Make it know who’s boss
Make the lanyard work for you, not you for the lanyard. Turn it into a liberating asset rather than regarding it as the symbolic noose of institutional control. Follow in the footsteps of those free-spirited pirates of yesteryear and attach all your daily needs to that lanyard - keys, a bag of spare pens, a few glue sticks, a whistle for emergencies, maybe a small bottle of rum for real emergencies.
I have learned how to make the lanyard and badge spin at dazzling speed around my neck, hula-hoop style. I now use this as a clear visual indicator to classes of my displeasure at something or someone, the degree of disapproval revealed by the rate at which the ID card is orbiting my neck. This soon stops miscreants in their tracks and prevents any trouble escalating. I never have to say a thing.
3. Teamroom quoits
Spend a therapeutic lunch-break with your friends, seeing who can first toss their lanyard over a chosen item - maybe an available mug, plant, pile of marking, or willing head of department. There’s also the notion of “ID-card conkers”, but…
4. Lanyard signalling
To avoid unwanted interruptions when we are working in the teamroom, say, “Why don’t we send clear and proactive messages to each other by simply reversing the lanyard and hanging the ID card down our back when we don’t want to be disturbed?” All social awkwardness solved.
5. Lanyard teasing
At a meeting recently, I noticed a colleague cupping his ID card and braid in hand and slowly gnawing in a teasing, Drew Barrymore manner. It was the most erotic thing to happen at a year-team meeting in many a month. The person concerned hotly denied that he had behaved in such a way, but there is plainly a role for the lanyard here, too.
Come on. The lanyard isn’t going away any time soon. Let’s make more of the one resource in school that we all have at our fingertips - perhaps the one resource we can be sure they will never take away from us.
Stephen Petty is head of humanities at Lord Williams’s School in Thame, Oxfordshire.
