Brian Zimmerman has an article on continued anger over the Richmond Community Schools dress code. The code appears to be fairly draconian, forbidding logos (except Satanic Richmond Red Devil logos!) and even stripes, floral prints, and other patterns. Anything more revealing than a crew neck is frowned upon. I didn’t see any word on the school corporation’s position on burqas.
Now it looks like the various sides are in the silly season. Both are dug in and neither can probably back down without looking silly. My suspicion is that the school corporation was being overly strict initially with an eye toward backing off later when it appeared everyone was more or less toeing the line. As long as people are putting up a fuss, they can’t back off without damaging their authority.
Obviously the school is in a bit of a tough position — partially of is own making, but not entirely. There are some kinds of dress which are unduly distracting or a problem. The least burdensome thing for everyone would probably be to go with an “I know it when I see it” approach. But, this leads to arbitrary enforcement and, more importantly, accusations of arbitrary or discriminatory enforcement. They’d probably like to avoid these line drawing problems by just going with uniforms. But, there was apparently push back on that idea. So, they went with a series of arbitrary rules about dress that they are strictly imposing on everyone. Good luck with that.
I don’t get it. What is wrong (or draconian) about a dress code? Why do professionals wear shirts and ties to court? These children should dress like they care.
School dress codes are a good idea in general, but it seems to me that students could “dress like they care” while wearing stripes, plaids, or even (heaven forfend) floral patterns.
I wear a suit and tie to court, but this dress code is more analogous to a court banning pinstripes or three-button suits.
Yup. It’s a line drawing problem. There is a long way between “dress nicely” and “no stripes.” If a kid came to school with monogrammed cuffs on his button down shirt, he’d look professional but also be in violation of the dress code, I think.
The problem arising from a ‘draconian’ dress code involves the state prohibiting non-disruptive forms of expression. We must always be vigilant when the state enforces what shall be orthodox.
These students do not shed their rights at the door. So long as the clothing does not disrupt the academic environment or pose a threat to other students it should be permitted. Dress codes that should be tailored as narrowly as possible to ensure a safe and productive academic environment. Anything further is unnecessary and counterproductive.
The idea of school as a place where some people’s notion of how other people’s children ought to be made to behave sure seems popular. Right up there with the idea that Sitting Down and Shutting Up are the two most important keys to getting a good education, an idea so gratifying we have to declare anything that vaguely opposes it a “disruption”. Disruption! The only people who talk like that are people with no idea of what goes on in schools, and people inside who are trying to settle the hash of troublemakers (“Disruption” is to school administrator what “Conspiracy” is to Crusading District Attorney). Anyone actually familiar with the school year knows it’s 180 days of Disruption.
Once again, we’re talking about high school students. Yes, they go to school to learn. But they go to school to learn about more than the Pythagorean Theorem and the Gadsden Purchase. They have dances, and ball games, and pep squads and student governments and Prom Kings and Queens selected by popularity. It’s the time when one begins to deal with that world, too, and not just the world that revolves around Algebra. Forcing students to dress and behave like junior Best Buy associates deprives them of a learning experience, and if we’re going to do that, it ought at least to be because there’s some evidence for it, not just the martinet impulses of a school administration that couldn’t be bothered checking with parents first.
Two words about the much-vaunted IPS code, which at least followed public hearings and suggestions, if only to preserve the fiction that it wasn’t simply the Superintendent’s doing: One, it had to exempt religious clothing requirements, and religious clothing is more disruptive than a Megadeath t-shirt. Then it had to exempt overweight children from the requirement of tucking shirts in, which now serves as a Tease Me sign. Finally, the sort of dress the code “corrected”–baggy jeans, grills, bare midriffs, the whole panoply of Ghetto–was already prohibited under the old rules, which could simply have been enforced, though that sort of thing doesn’t garner much teevee face time.
Pffft. Face it. School is a job (kind of like an unpaid internship). Whether it is private prep school, public school or religious school, those places of learning are teaching kids how to fit into society (at one level or another). So, would you want your interns to show up dressed like hookers and pimps? Is acting like hookers and pimps what you are preparing your young for?
Do you really think that not allowing kids to express their “individuality” (which involves dressing like someone else) at school is doing them a favor for their future? “But boss, my school let me wear my “Kill da Man!” t-shirts at school”.
Do you really think that this is stifling their emotional development, or improving their self-image?
I could go on and on.
But, if you really think that, then you should start up your own chain of charter schools. According to your opinions, you should have applicants beating your doors down to get in. And just think of the contribution to society you’ll be.
Then there are the private schools, most of which have dress codes (I wore a tie everyday, so that tells Varangianguard what they were preparing me for), and those paying for it either chose to accept it or go elsewhere. There was no political discussion.
This is endemic to political ‘solutions’ to ‘problems’- Public money is spent, so the public wants input into behavior. I have no sympathy. This kind of inefficiency is what should be expected.
The problem with a dress code that uses terms like “not distracting” and “appropriate” is that they are subjective. While I wish everyone had the same standard for what those terms mean as I do, they obviously don’t, otherwise there is no need for a dress code in the first place.
Saying “Solid colors only” removes subjectivity. It is the only way to enforce a rule and be uniform about it.
Face it. School is a job…
Sez who?
those places of learning are teaching kids how to fit into society
They’re educating them, supposedly. If that leads you into “fitting in” so be it; if it leads you to Walden Pond, itinerant folksinging, or the life of a starving artist appreciated only after his death? Still good. What makes “fitting in” a touchstone of the Good? And who says it can be achieved through proper fabric selection and browbeating?
So, would you want your interns to show up dressed like hookers and pimps?
Depends on my business. Y’know, this is exactly my point. Where does this analogy come from? Students aren’t “my” interns, or “yours” or the school’s; they’re young citizens required to attend school through age 16, and encouraged to go on after that. That some people see them the same way the NFL and NBA see college athletics–as a free farm system designed to produce another generation of eager minimum-wage earners who can count doughnuts to twelve, make change, and wear a silly polyester uniform without complaining–is beside the point. We educate people, at taxpayer expense, because an educated population beats the hell out of an illiterate one. At least in theory. Not because it would gratify some people to have a better class of caddy or cocktail waitress.
Do you really think that this is stifling their emotional development, or improving their self-image?
Well, at least as much as you seem to think every student at Richmond High was wearing G-strings and nipple clamps. What I said, or what I intended to say, was that the knee-jerk apologetics for any authoritarian move by school administrators simply wishes all other concerns away on the grounds that it has the best answers. This is why normal teenagers behaving like normal teenagers in Normalville are suddenly portrayed as roving gangs of street whores and thugs who just need a good chain yanking. No other evidence is needed. If the single purpose of our educational system is to make kids “fit in” until the time comes to buy that choice cemetery plot, maybe we should downsize third grade, outsource fifth and eighth to Mexico and India, respectively, and tell all graduates over 65 we’re rescinding their diplomas due to rising health care costs. But, please, don’t tell that to Tony Bennett.
DR, you really are naive about the intent of “education”. You seem to believe some pie-in-the-sky ideal that primary and secondary schools are geared towards churning out artists and other intellectuals. You couldn’t be more wrong.
You are correct that students aren’t my or your interns, in fact they are society’s interns. Society is paying for this, not so these kids can find themselves, but so that they become productive members of society. That’s why society is mad – because it ain’t workin’ out that way. And, unless one plans on working at the corner pagan bookstore or Hooters, one better learn early that MegaDeath t-shirts and pop star outfits aren’t going to get them very far in society.
People are deluding themselves if they think that society, as a whole, enjoys dropping untold millions of dollars so that their kids can show up any way they want, and act any way they let them at home. Society is providing this money as a public service, with the justifiable expectation that society gets a postive return from their investment. Anybody that doesn’t want to buy into that business model, including dress and behavior codes are free to be home schooled at their earliest convenience.
Remember that home schooling is an option here in Indiana, and that nobody is making anybody’s future little Charles Manson to attend public (or private) schools. Want to let your little princess show up at the dining room table for home schooling all tarted up? Feel free. Just keep it out of schools either funded by societal tax dollars, or by large amounts of other people’s tuition.
Just as an aside, what kind of hookers do you hang out with anyway? G-strings and nipple clamps??? Wow.
i also went to a private high school with full uniform. it certainly didn’t help me “fit in”, but it did give me countless opportunities to look up my classmates’ skirts. i’m not sure how letting us wear jeans & t-shirts could’ve been any more distracting than that.
Okay, now that you’ve restated your original points successfully, let’s back up and see if we can reconnect with the issue, and maybe even address what I’ve said a little.
You seem to believe some pie-in-the-sky ideal that primary and secondary schools are geared towards churning out artists and other intellectuals.
Nobody’s said anything about primary schools, and what I said–in response to the contention that teaching children to “fit in”, under legal duress if necessary–was that schools are also engaged in educating future artists and musicians and writers and thinkers–professions which are not traditionally moved forward by people who have been taught What To Kiss and When–just as much as they are future change makers, telemarketers, and Ponzi schemers. That’s not naiveté; it’s an observable fact, and it’s been a fact of Western liberal arts for a couple centuries.
Society is paying for this, not so these kids can find themselves, but so that they become productive members of society.
To quote an earlier poster–me, if I recall–Sez who? Western education dating to Socrates has been about producing the well-rounded individual, not simply the guy who could calculate how many khakis and golf shirts he needed for a semester. Who are you to decide what is or isn’t productive, or what a student is “supposed” to be going to school for?
That’s why society is mad – because it ain’t workin’ out that way.
Society is mad about a lot of things, frequently in the clinical sense. And, also frequently, because it doesn’t know what it’s talking about, gets fed a lot of politically-motivated hooey, and hasn’t the necessary skills to evaluate it. Funny thing about that is, when you ask people to evaluate their own schools the results are generally highly positive.
And, unless one plans on working at the corner pagan bookstore or Hooters, one better learn early that MegaDeath t-shirts and pop star outfits aren’t going to get them very far in society.
Well, a cowboy outfit elected two recent Presidents, so I guess there’s always hope.
Look, do you imagine that all high-schoolers are stupid or something? That the magic words Do It Because I Say So solves every question for them? Bosh. High school students know where they are, and the know enough to distinguish between rules designed to make the educational process run smoother, and bullshit flung at them because some administrator had an unsuccessful potty training. If one decides he’d rather work in a record store than dress like Jack Nicholas, so what? He’s not going to earn appreciably less than what he’d get wearing a uniform at Burger Death.
And how many Megadeath teeshirts did you count in that Richmond crowd? How many junior hookers? I saw a lot of stripes, and a couple of V-necks. Is that really a sound business model? Or is it an extension of the I Run Things And What I Say Goes Without Bothering With Evidence routine? And dollars to doughnuts says that anyone dressed in a manner which truly disrupted the educational process was in violation of the old, less draconian rules as well.
Incidentally, public schools–even in Indiana–have an obligation to educate anyone between the ages of five and sixteen who walks in the door and lives in the district. They do not have the right to erect unreasonable impediments to the process, nor to tell anyone “If you don’t like it here, homeschool”. They are ethically obligated–and will soon be legally mandated–to include parents and members of the general public in the decision-making process. Schools are not intended to be little fiefdoms, and their mission isn’t squeezing every student through the sausage grinder, the better to make Wal*Mart associates. And for that matter, if you want the Business Model to gain universal acclaim (let alone the force of law), maybe it could start by doing a better job of running businesses.
I am a parent at that has been outside the school since my daughter was suspened last Wednesday. I will be outside the school until a change in the dress code takes place. Its not that we opose a dress code it just the way that the school officals are enforcing it. I have seen aboy who has gages and ear rings in his cheeck and below his lip get suspend not because he was in violation of the dress code becasue he face was a distraction to the educational process. Also I saw a boy who was caring a hat to his locker before school got started get suspend because he was carring his hat. Yet the niece of one of my fellow protesters daughter deliberalety did not conform to the dress code by wearing a shirt that said I love coke and had Bettty Boop on it she walked past the prinicaple and she never got in trouble. Consisty and letting the children where what they want that what I want
I would have been sent home every day for the last two weeks. SHIT! I’m wearing stripes today. Yesterday there was some dark blue stitching in the shape of a little sailboat on my solid light blue shirt. The day before that–stripes again.
Chalk it up to my upbringing, I guess.
Meanwhile, my little 3 yr. old Tommy has new clothes, because his previous look (tasteful stripes and occasionally some little logos, nice belt, khaki pants, and saddle shoes or penny loafers) didn’t pass muster. The irony is that I think a pack of solid-colored Hanes t-shirts would be acceptable.
Some of the poorer parents were struggling with a hundred or more dollars they hadn’t budgeted for.
I will try to get back to the topic at hand, which is what has happened here in Richmond. The choice here wasn’t a dress code or no dress code, as varianguard seems to think. (I’m not sure how wearing stripes, flowers, Levi’s tags, or showing your collarbone equates with looking like a hooker or a pimp. Please explain.) The choice was between the previous dress code, which would not have allowed “Kill Da Man!” t-shirts or anything remotely violent or suggestive of gangs, drugs, or sexual activity and a new, more restrictive code that is open to inconsistent interpretation and enforcement, to put it mildly. Also, as T mentioned above, the code is being enforced system-wide, meaning that it applies to kids in pre-school programs and elementary school. Are pre-schoolers and kindergartners getting tarted up and flashing gang colors anywhere?
Another issue is that the school board passed the revised dress code in May and apparently did nothing to notify local retailers or work with them to see that the “plain” clothes required by the revised code would be available in time for the beginning of school. One school board member voted against the code because she felt that the required clothing would not be available in local stores. She was right. Wal-Mart orders their school clothes a year ahead of time and allegedly has had to try to obtain clothes from other stores to meet the requirements of Richmond’s dress code. K-Mart has allegedly said that no one from Richmond Community Schools informed them of the dress code requirements.
The term “plain” means no stripes, checks, plaids, flowers, polka dots, other designs and logos. School logos, such as the RHS Red Devil are allowed, however. If someone wears a shirt with a butterfly or a flower on it, s/he could be suspened. If the same student wears a shirt with the RHS Red Devil, that is perfectly acceptable. I would think that those of you who are moralizing about kids being tarted up might find that odd. By the way, the RHS Red Devil is not some cutesy cartoon devil like the one from Harvey Comics. It’s a sinister looking devil.
Jeans are allowed, but the code has also been interpreted to mean no contrasting threads or decorative stitching on jeans. It’s difficult to find jeans that don’t have contrasting threads. There can also be no contrasting colors on the same item of clothing. A crew neck shirt that has a red body and a blue neck would not be allowed, for example.
Although the code does not specify it, teachers and administrators have sent kids home for wearing crew neck shirts that reveal the collarbone. What is sexual or inappropriate about showing the collarbone?
The code is poorly written, inconsistently enforced, and parents have had little opportunity to get clothes that meet the standard. Why is that so difficult for some to understand?
Why is that so difficult for some to understand?
Because the illusion that Tough Talk=Efficacy is too fragile to expose to facts.