Small Things Count

A Florida girl was pulled from class and reprimanded for wearing a too-short skirt, violating the school’s dress code.  To continue going to class, she was made to change into what her mom calls a “shame suit”: over-sized sweat pants and a bright yellow tee shirt, both saying “Dress Code Violation.”  Feeling humiliated, she asked to call her mom, who became as upset as her daughter.

The school claims that this was her choice since she could have taken in-school suspension or had her parents called to bring her more appropriate clothing. The girl claimed no knowledge of those other choices, even though they’re written into the dress code that every student and parent should have read.

I can’t help wondering if there was a fourth choice. In my more permissive high-school-teaching days, I remember watching parents drop off fresh-scrubbed kids dressed in nice outfits.  Once on campus, these girls met up with friends. Together, they went to their locker to retrieve “school clothes”–short skirts/shorts, tight/skimpy tops, jeans two sizes too small, etc.  And the make-up bag.  When they emerged from the bathroom, ready for a day at school, their appearance had drastically changed.  The clothes they’d worn to school (and would be put back on–and faces scrubbed–before heading home) spent the day in their lockers.

The fourth option, then, might have been a trip to the girl’s locker and a quick change.

A lesson I’d learned back then, as I vainly tried teaching English to teenaged males with their tongues hanging out and their eyes firmly fixed on what the girls had on display, was that a reasonable dress code is Education’s Friend.