The school system in modern America is an interesting beast. It was originally designed to prepare children to work on assembly lines during the industrial revolution. As such, things like creativity and ingenuity were stamped out of students as being counterproductive to the economy. While much has changed in the United States, not much has changed with the way we teach over the last hundred-plus years. There is a lot of room for improvement, and many ideas on how best to update our system. Key within this is allowing the creative spark that lives inside all young children to flourish and expand because, with our modern and ever-changing environment, this next generation is going to need to retain that spark.
With that being said, there still must be limits placed upon children. “Lord of the Flies” is, in my view, one of the best examples of what happens when children are left to their own devices. Kids lack the maturity, responsibility, and understanding of consequences that are necessary for them to have free reign over their lives. The idea of causal relationships is completely outside of their understanding. So, when liberals argue so vehemently for children to have complete control over their lives, it boggles my mind. I thought that after they declared a child should be able to gender identify themselves at the age of five, the left would realize the insanity of their views. However, after hearing about the recent decision of the Alameda Unified School District (in California of course), I see I underestimated the depth of their insanity.
The school district in Alameda looked at the dress code and realized there were several problems. According to their statement, “The rules were subjective in nature and resulted in inconsistent enforcement based on gender, body type, and maturity. The rules were inconsistent with [Alameda Unified School District’s] value of inclusivity. The rules did not support student wellness and positive body image.”
While I find the second two statements to be typical liberal excuses to not enforce standards, I agree with their first issue. When I was a high school JROTC instructor, I noticed that teachers had a very difficult time confronting students for their inappropriate attire. In fact, it got so bad that I went to the principal’s office to ensure that we were still supposed to enforce certain standards. Yet the problem here, according to the memo announcing changes to their policy, had more to do with the belief that “more of the policy was focused on girls’ clothing than boys” which resulted in girls getting “sent out of the classroom for infractions more often than boys, which meant they were losing more class time than their male peers. Besides, the students and teacher noted, measuring the widths of straps and lengths of shorts in class or pointing out that a student was showing too much skin was resulting in embarrassment and shame for students. Such feelings can make it hard for students to concentrate on learning and can create long-term issues with body image.”
As someone who has spent some time in high schools, I can attest to the disproportionate number of females violating the policy. Notice I did not say being called out. It is a cause and effect relationship. The girls choose to violate the policy (cause) and therefore have the consequence (effect) of being called out. Apparently, though, consequences should not be linked to one’s lack of following the rules.
So, in order to combat this issue, the Alameda district decided to essentially do away with enforcing clothing standards. In fact, they made it very simple with only three rules:
1. Must Wear: Bottoms, tops, shoes, and clothing that covers genitals, buttocks and areolae/nipples with opaque material.
2. May Wear: Hats, including religious headwear; hoodie sweatshirts (overhead is allowed); fitted pants, including leggings, yoga pants, and skinny jeans; sweatpants; shorts; skirts and dresses; midriff-baring shirts; pajamas; ripped jeans, as long as underwear is not exposed; tank tops, including spaghetti straps, halter tops; and “tube” (strapless) tops, athletic attire.
3. Cannot Wear: Violent language or images, images or language depicting drugs or alcohol (or any illegal item or activity) or the use of same, hate speech, profanity, pornography, images and/or language that create a hostile or intimidating environment based on any protected class, visible underwear or bathing suits of similar design, helmets, hoods, or other headgear that obscures the face (except as a religious observance).
I for one always love when liberals use words such as hate speech as this term is completely open to interpretation. However, lets step away from what I am sure will quickly become a ban on things like the American flag. According to this policy, an 8th grade girl could wear a 2” tube top as long as it covered the right areas. Does this not disturb anyone else other than me?
The policy states that students “should be able to wear clothing without fear of or actual unnecessary discipline or body shaming.” Why shouldn’t they fear discipline? Is not that the entire point of being reprimanded? This is the problem with liberal schooling policies, they remove negative effects from bad behavior. How else do children learn limitations for their actions? Social stigma, or the threat thereof, is one of the most powerful tools a parent or teacher has. While I am not saying we should call a student up to the front of the class and humiliate them, there is a comfortable medium that will ensure compliance.
I am also disturbed by the terms body shaming and body-positive. I agree that it is bad for kids to be mocked and called names for physical issues; this is especially true for kids who have deformities or disabilities. However, I believe it is equally bad for us to tell morbidly obese children that they are fine the way they are and should simply be happy with themselves. Forget the fact that they will be stigmatized by society as a whole and thought of as undisciplined and lazy. How about instead we look at the health concerns that these issues will cause as they grow up in life.
The renowned actress Loretta Young said, “Wearing the correct dress for any occasion is a matter of good manners.” That statement could not be more correct, especially when it comes to school-age children. The truth is that what kids wear is not about them at all. It is about the effect that their clothing has on the others around them and how it influences the learning environment. Chief Academic Officer Steven Fong said it best, “We are excited to be moving forward with such a student-centered approach.” How about instead we go forward with a learning-centered approach?
Once again, just as with the entirety of the gender debate, liberal biases completely ignore the facts of human evolutionary development. You want to take children, who already are known for a lack of self-discipline and control, and allow them to sexualize their attire while at the same time expecting no distractions to the learning environment? If we cannot see the direct correlation between this and the moral decay of our society, I don’t know how else to paint the picture.
There are many ways that we can allow children to express their creative abilities which are much more suited to learning. For example, instead of focusing on process-oriented thinking, teach them to understand the concepts and let them figure out how to get to the answer. That is what is really expected in the modern world: the ability of our workforce to identify an issue and come up with a creative solution.
