The public high school in Monterey Bay, California is in an uproar. Actually, it's students are. This year, the school district wrote a new set of guidelines that prevents a majority of the kids from dressing like they did the year before.
The issue made a small splash in the local paper but the administration doesn't seem too concerned. Not so for the students. Trouble seems to be brewing in the Facebook world:
i cant wear fishnets. i cant wear shorts. i cant wear my 40$ jeans with pre-made holes. i cant wear v-necks. i cant wear flipflops. WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO WEAR LADY?! I DONT HAVE ANYTHING ELSE!!!! I CAN SHOW UP TO SCHOOL NAKED! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?? WHY DONT LET ME WEAR MY CLOTHES!?! we dont all dress like were Amish.
Small beans? Or a big deal? For the kids I know, this is a very big deal.
Honestly, schools are having the same old tired arguments with students decade after decade; just search dress code and ACLU and you'll find examples from Napa Valley, CA, Pine Bluff, AR, and Atlanta, GA, just to name a few.
The result is that teachers are enforcing outdated and often idiotic rules that don't work and that kids are fighting unnecessary battles. Back in the day, it used to be boys with long hair and ear piercings - now socially acceptable - today, depending on your locale, it's baseball caps, short skirts, and abnormally colored hair.
And it all comes down to a simple fallacy, advertised on the website of Monterey High:
We believe that attention to appearance and a student's attitude toward himself and his/her school is related.
Basically, translated into normal language - kids who dress in ways acceptable to the administration succeed in school and kids who dress in ways unacceptable don't succeed in school. At least the administration is being honest. They have fallen for the fallacy themselves. In old school speak, geeks will be great at math and stoners will fail.
But by this definition and the current dress code of the school, my straight A student should have failed his classes. He wore his torn jeans below his waist line. He allowed inches of boxer shorts to show. He wore v-neck shirts (though no plunging necklines for him). He wore studded belts. He even wore shoes with words written on them and if any teacher would have taken the time to read them, they would have been found inappropriate, I am sure.
Dress has nothing to do with success in high school - attitudes of teachers and staff towards kids who dress differently have everything to do with their success. Maybe what we need to be addressing isn't the dress code at all but is the innate discrimination that exists in today's schools. Boys who wear baggy clothes must be hiding weapons. Girls who wear short skirts must be sexually provocative. According to modern myth, the only way to correct these negative behaviors is to change how kids dress. Because, of course, if we dress them correctly, their behavior will modify in return. It's the biggest load of baloney and I am shocked that educated teaching staff even falls for it.
We have a crisis in our schools. We have kids who want to learn and can't do so because the classrooms are rampant with discipline issues. We have kids who don't want to be in school so act out. Clothing is the biggest red herring in the world.
The way that you dress should have nothing to do with the way that you learn. That's what many of today's kids really and truly believe. Your clothes are just a further expression of yourself and for many kids, changing their style would be like changing the color of their skin. They don't see the need to conform with a society that believes only kids dressed in a certain way can succeed. It's not true. It's a lie just like it was lie back in the 1950's to believe that men were better at science than women and a lie in the 1960's to believe that blacks didn't deserve a decent education because of the color of their skin.
Administrators get mad at kids for showing up in short shorts and fishnet stockings or blue jeans with tears and a waist band that allows inches of boxer shorts to show because it threatens their ability to control students. In reality, who really cares? If teens bring their minds and their will to the class, if they pay attention and bring respect, then who cares what they wear? I am pretty sure that most teachers will tell you that they don't... that they are only following the rules set by the school district.
Many will feel like this teacher in Fresno, CA:
The fact is, adolescents make it their job to test boundaries. If we make a set of rules, teenagers will immediately test them. When they find out that those rules are inconsistently enforced, they will continue to test and push and point out the flaws in the system. Is it really all that important that we completely ban tank tops? Or prevent kids from dying their hair purple? The number of rules, the vague wording, and the inconsistency of enforcement make our dress codes a joke. If we could reduce our rules down to just a few that are actually important to the children’s safety and health, we could make a dress code that works.
My son attended Monterey High for a single semester last year before we moved due to a military assignment. He is friends with many kids via Facebook and the uproar over the new rules is full of contempt for the administration. These are kids across the board - kids with great grades and kids with okay grades; kids from poor families, kids from rich families; kids who want to learn and kids who could care less. This new policy is pulling them together, if only in anger at the stupidity of adults. Basically, they have lost any respect they may have had for the administration because these kids believe the administration has little to no respect for them, their choices, and their ability to get themselves dressed in a socially acceptable manner. From the Monterey High Website itself:
Good taste, good grooming and appropriateness of attire are a part of learning. Monterey High School feels that any haircut, make up, hat or clothing or jewelry that draws undue attention to the wearer or causes interruption in the educational process is inappropriate.
The lessons these kids are learning are not that the ones that the administration intends them to learn:
- Teenagers and Adults have different definitions of good taste.
- Teenagers and Adults have different definitions of good grooming.
- Teenagers and Adults have different definitions of appropriateness of attire.
- Adult society has little respect for difference.
- Adult society has little respect for freedom of expression.
- Adult society is hypocritical - kids feel the rules apply only to them and not to the adults.
- Adult society has little respect for culture, especially culture that is considered 'fringe.'
If the adults in this school district want to change these lessons yet still maintain a dress code, I would recommend that they bring the kids to the bargaining table. Why must a dress code be written by adults? Why can't the student body be a part of the process? We live in a Democracy and it would be a great opportunity for high school students to participate in the process of making laws. Because that's what a dress code is. And if, at the end of the day, the dress code goes away, what does the school have to lose? Maybe nothing... they might actually gain.
Relaxing guidelines might actually create a better school environment. That's what they found in Lubbock, TXlast September:
“You kind of prepare for the worst, and that hasn’t transpired,” Young said. “It has freed up my administrative team to use our time more productively, to monitor instruction and to focus our attention on more serious matters.”
Coronado High School Principal Lynn Akin, who was the other principal to address the school board on June 17, agreed with Young that it has saved administrators substantial time by not having to patrol the halls and looking for violations. Another positive result was students are not coming to class frustrated over wearing an earring, he said.
“It has worked out just fine. There has been no increase in any of the areas we adjusted. If anything, the atmosphere has been calmer,” he said.
My recommendations to these kids? If the new guidelines are really bothering them, they need to start a movement. They need to organize. And they need to tackle this problem as a group.
The best place to start? Facebook, of course.
They need to gather not just kids to their cause, but parents like myself, teachers who are tired of wasting class time because someone wore their baseball cap to class, and even administrators who believe their time is better spent addressing the core issues of disciplinary problems rather than the dress code violations that are a symptom of much larger issues.
And they need to consistently make the point that their clothing choices have nothing to do with their desire to learn. If anything, the kids that I know from Monterey High, the ones most likely to push limits and to attract attention, are some of the most intelligent I have ever met. If anyone can convince a school district to change, they can. Prejudice should never be condoned... especially from people in power.