Banning T-Shirts
Posted: August 21st, 2007 | Author: Sam | Filed under: Blog Posts, Children, Individualism, Libertarians, Pennsylvania, Politics, Scary Stuff, Stupid Stuff |
There’s also this.
Let’s face it: if the above photo of me in a beautiful gray suit with a nice blue shirt, pink tie, and flip-flops doesn’t convince you that I’m a fashion maven, ain’t nothing gonna. I maintain that I looked great. Others who attended the wedding with me were more quizzical in their interpretations. As in: “Really? Flip-flops with a suit? Really?!?!”
Fashion is one of those great ways to express ourselves. Maybe it shouldn’t be so, but it is. Today, I was told that I do a good job of rocking the homeless preppy look, which means my plaid shorts, white t-shirts, unshaven face and growing hair apparently. I guess that’s a compliment.
Of course, this brief fashion rant leads us to yet another school board deciding on yet another set of draconian dresscode designed at limiting expression by students. Although originally even stricter - students were going to be required to wear reds, whites, or blues - the dresscode outlaws t-shirts, jeans, and colors other than navy blue, khaki, brown or black.
It is interesting to me how we see the speech of children repressed regularly and casually, as if these younger versions of us are deserving of less protection than we afford ourselves. (Before the first, and most obvious, objection, I’d like to point out that the dresscodes you’re subjected to at work are voluntary. You can always leave your job. Kids cannot leave school if they’re individuality is being trampled all over.) Some argue that dresscodes benefit children because it eliminates one obvious expression of classism between students: the rich kids can’t dress any better than the poor kids. Although this is a somewhat compelling argument, kids are always going to know the difference. The kid who takes the bus to school is going to know that the kid driving his Land Rover to school is richer, regardless of his trousers.
The simple fact that these adults would deprive children of their ability to, say, wear a t-shirt expressing a political or religious or sexual or musical or artistic opinion should be of concern to freedom loving peoples everywhere. But of course, as it almost always is, the concerns of kids are rarely fodder for adults, unless there is a political battle to be won. The adults pushing this ban, incidentally, are doing so because the dresscode will allegedly make this safe school even safer. They don’t care about these kids; they care about the standing it will give them in the community.
And if that standing comes at the cost of free expression by the citizenry? Well, so be it. Sadly, our conceptions of individual freedoms tend to recede considerably at the age of 18. I’m not entirely sure why this is, but I’d rather have kids wearing whatever it is that they want than have an army of lookalike drones.
“Lookalike drones,” eh? Looking alike makes you a drone?
Oh, that’s right. Your clothes, and the similarity or individuality of them determines your thoughts and behavior! I forgot.
While our previous waste-of-time discussion on this matter was enough to annoy and bore an entire room full of people, and I was most earnestly playing devil’s advocate in my defense of school dress codes, I still maintain that your passionate defenses of fasion freedom border on ridiculous. Sorry, man, but it’s just fucking clothing; not even all day clothing, at that, just 6 hours a day clothing.
And, on a more general note, I think the public education system is one of the most wonderful things that our government gives us (Though no sane person would claim its perfect, or even without some serious flaws, or evenly distributed, or any number of other things — but damn does it have potential) and they should be allowed to make rules as part of that.
I mean this in the nicest possible way Matt: you’re wrong. And you’re wrong for all the same reasons that I told you before. It’s fine for you to think that freedom for children doesn’t really matter, but it does. Telling children what they have to wear is but one small encroachment on the individuality of children. That is a big deal, and bigger deal still is the notion that we as adults can mandate to children what they can and cannot wear.
I’m not advocating rules that allow for children to show up in elementary school wearing bikinis and diapers; I’m advocating rules that allow you to wear your white t-shirts and jeans and me to wear my white t-shirts and plaid shorts. I don’t see how you can possibly object to this.
I guess I don’t really object to your stance, per se. I just don’t think it’s that big of a deal. I most certainly don’t think dress codes in public schools are “Draconian” (”excessively harsh and severe,” according to Webster’s) (What’s next, comparing school boards to Nazi Germany, pulling ol’ Godwin’s Law into the mix?), nor do I consider your white tshirts and plaid shorts a terribly crucial part of “free expression of the citizenry” while inside public education facilities during school hours. I mean, you’re there to fucking learn, not strut your fashion sense. It seems to me you’d be better spending your time looking at the curriculum, teaching methods employed, or incidences of bullying, classism and racism in public schools. All of those are much, much, MUCH bigger threats to indivuality in the schools than dress codes.
Furthermore, maybe if the young `uns are forced (Yes, forced) to stop thinking about fashion for 30 hours a week, the individuality you’re so concerned about could make it somewhere where it actually matters, like into their skulls.
[...] No matter. I have used my tiny little soapbox to protest the treatment of children before. In that case, I was protesting something that adults don’t think matters, because to the minds of many adults, children don’t matter. This case is obviously different. Here we’re not talking about a dresscode. We’re talking about the health and well-being of an individual and the refusal of the state to step in simply because her health and well-being was threatened by parents. [...]