U.K. teenager Jacob Ford thought his school’s new policy banning backpacks in the hallways was “ridiculous.”  So he decided to do something he thought was equally ridiculous.

The 17-year-old went to class with his books in a cooking pot in protest. Then, he carried books in a wicker basket. And finally, he brought them to school in a microwave.

The Spalding Grammar School in Lincolnshire, U.K., 200 km north of London, decided to enforce the bag rule after a staff member and two students were injured by students carrying large backpacks and bookbags slung over their shoulders.

Ford said he was suspended for two days after he refused to hand over his phone which he was using to keep his mother, Tracy Ford, abreast of his “treatment at school” by staff.

He said his mother always encouraged him to express his opinions, but also to accept the consequences of his actions.

“I’m proud of the fact that he felt strongly enough about it to stand up and do something about it,” Tracy Ford, a mother of six, explained in a telephone interview with CTVNews.ca. “I believe children should have their own freedom to have their say equally.”

“We all have a right to be listened to. So hats off to him,” Ford said, explaining how she eventually transferred her son to another school because she feared he wouldn’t be treated fairly at Spalding Grammar School.

Until this year, students in the U.K.’s equivalent of Grades 11 and 12 had been exempt from a previous backpack ban for students between Grades six to 10. 

Repeated requests for comment from the school, by email and by phone, were not returned. But head teacher Steven Wilkinson told U.K. media outlets there was more to the story.

“We have a student who has behaved in an increasingly inappropriate way, actions the likes of which I have never witnessed, and who has been sanctioned entirely in line with the school’s policies,” he told local newspaper, Spalding Today.

Ford: 'I wanted to get my point across. And I think I did'

But the teenager said that most parents and kids in his grade were against the ban. Fellow student Hannah Catterall even started a petition.

“By not permitting backpacks, students are unable to carry revision materials to and from school with ease and therefore grades may dramatically decrease,”the petition read.

Catterall’s petition had garnered at least 463 signatures, according to Metro, before school staff asked her to remove it. Ford said the school then held an assembly to address how it had “brought a bad reputation to the school.”

That’s when he wrote a 3,000-word manifesto explaining why he thought the bookbag ban was silly, which brought even more attention to the dispute.

“I wanted to get my point across. And I think I did,” Ford said.

It was only after the school ignored his letter that he started his bookbag protest and hauled out his cooking pot, wicker basket and his family’s microwave.

As he settles into his new school this week, he’s not certain whether moreactivism is in his future.

“I don’t know. But, whatever it is I feel passionate about — I’m going to pursue.”