Friday, August 12, 2005

THE RAGGED EDGE: Lighten up on the dress code

Okay, I'm going to rant for a few minutes. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I think I've just about had it with the CISD dress code. The following story may be exaggerated for effect but, if there is even the tiniest shred of truth to it, I give up.

According to some students (and at least one school employee), several girls here in Cameron were sent home from picture day last week because they had exposed their collarbones. Not their bare shoulders. Not their midriff (though cheerleaders seem to get away with ignoring that particular regulation). They got sent home because the collarbone below their neck was exposed. It is, they were told, a new part of the dress code.

The only response I could come up with was ???????.

Our district already has a reputation for draconian enforcement of a rather draconian dress code that seems to be re-interpreted every two or three months. I'd lay odds that we can trace at least part of our sharp decline in enrollment to this.

Last year, for example, our kids were banned from wearing hoodies (hooded sweatshirts), of all things, because the garment seemed to let some of the boys get around the stricture against baggy pants and un-tucked shirts.

What have we become, some kind of crazed fashion Nazis? Let's just wrap these kids up in shapeless, one-size-fits-all orange coveralls and call it done, shall we?

Let's consider those baggy pants for a moment. That particular garment sparked much of the silliness that now passes for a dress code at Cameron.

Some school trustees and parents don't like baggy pants but what they really, really dodn't like is the fact that some white kids have started wearing these pants. They are fashionable among young Hispanic and black men but we can't really have white kids wearing them, can we?

Listen, I don't much care for them, either. I think they look silly. You can't run in them and you can't climb into a pickup truck wearing them because the crotch hangs around your knees. But, that's no reason to ban them. In fact, a sharp lawyer might be able to make the case that banning this kind of clothing is discriminatory.

The fact is, folks didn't like long hair on guys back when I went to high school and wasted a lot of time trying to ban the custom. Sharp lawyers across the south tied school boards up in knots over that one.

On the other hand, school officials didn't seem to mind that most of the girls wore micro-mini dresses so short that they would be considered positively scandalous by today's standards.

Times change and fashions come and go. So what?

If you don't like baggy pants, don't wear them. If you really don't like baggy pants, don't let your kids wear them. But, friends, this is a fashion issue. It's probably even a cultural issue. It is not a school issue.

My mother-in-law, a veteran teacher with years of service teaching at inner city schools, once warned that it is very dangerous to challenge the creativity of teenagers. They have a lot more time - and motivation - to figure out ways to defeat school rules they consider inconsequential and ultimately meaningless than administrators have to figure out ways to enforce them.

We publish the Thorndale Champion so I'm occasionally on that campus and see pictures of their kids all the time. Barely half of them dress in a fashion that would meet the letter of our dress code. Yet, that district has been ranked by the Texas Education Agency as "recognized" for three consecutive years. The year before this incredible run, TISD was rated "exemplary."

When was the last time that CISD earned "recognized" status as a district? (Never.)

Thorndale has a pretty simple dress code and doesn't waste a whole lot of time or energy enforcing it. Here it is: Don't show underwear; don't wear ratty jeans, flip flops, tank tops or t-shirts that promote alcohol, drugs or tobacco. They don't like baggy pants either but don't get all bent out of shape about it as long as there's no visible underwear involved.

That's about it.

Violators don't get sent home; nor are they sent to some sort of punishment class. Instead, the principal makes the offender exchange his or her clothing for a horrid lime green t-shirt and a pair of ugly gray shorts. All it takes is one day in that outfit for a Thorndale student to see the light. The school has very, very few repeat offenders.

Some claim that a strict dress code, strictly enforced, instills discipline and teaches citizenship. This may be true, in the Marines or at a Catholic school or with a sane and consistent policy. I posit that aggressive enforcement of an unreasonable dress code that doesn't let kids learn about life by making poor fashion choices, or allow for cultural differences or differences in body type, creates as many discipline problems as it solves.

Enforcing this dress code is sapping our resources and instilling in our kids a sense of resentment and contempt for school rules. That's much more dangerous, in the long run, than the occasional bare midriff or un-tucked shirt.

Our school officials should worry less about what our kids are wearing and more - a whole lot more - about what they're learning.

This column was published Aug. 11, 2005 in the Cameron Herald.