Comments on: Uniformity and school ties http://www.individualeleven.net/2009/09/uniformity-and-school-ties/ Tech and gadgetry for free thinking individuals. Wed, 21 Dec 2011 12:17:29 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: SkivingWords http://www.individualeleven.net/2009/09/uniformity-and-school-ties/comment-page-1/#comment-3903 SkivingWords Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:44:23 +0000 http://www.individualeleven.net/?p=994#comment-3903 Hilarious. My very small private high school had some weird dress code based on the 1950s, no uniform. We were supposed to all wear collared shirts, no t-shirts--everyone wore flannel collared shirts, open, with a graphical t-shirt underneath, no hats (girls could wear hats for a bit and then they banned that because the boys protested), no blue jeans but the kids from inner city Washington D.C. could wear their gang colors if they liked. I saw one boy wear baggy black jeans over his blue jeans and take the black jeans off in class five mins before the end of the day bell, complaining about how hot it was. Simply amazingly dumb the lengths people go to. It made me furious, not because of conforming, since everyone broke the rules or bent them, but mainly for the white upper middle class ideas behind what is appropriate clothing. Esp. the idea about blue jeans. That was all a class decision from the director/headmistress who was this old crone hopelessly out of touch with reality. Other schools were making dress code policy based on real problems like gangs and drugs, and ours was making their policy based on some idea that they could take rich white kids and poorer black kids and make them into a model version of white America from some bygone era. My school was split fifty fifty between white kids and black kids with Asian kids as a minority and Latino kids almost non existent. Oh and when a girl got pregnant they practically forced her out of the school, the way they treated her. It was ridiculous. And all about class and reputation. Made me nuts. I tried conforming my first year too, got nice collared shirts and whatnot. By the end of the year I was wearing flannels and t-shirts and dark colored jeans and got my share of detentions as well. Hilarious. My very small private high school had some weird dress code based on the 1950s, no uniform. We were supposed to all wear collared shirts, no t-shirts–everyone wore flannel collared shirts, open, with a graphical t-shirt underneath, no hats (girls could wear hats for a bit and then they banned that because the boys protested), no blue jeans but the kids from inner city Washington D.C. could wear their gang colors if they liked. I saw one boy wear baggy black jeans over his blue jeans and take the black jeans off in class five mins before the end of the day bell, complaining about how hot it was. Simply amazingly dumb the lengths people go to.

It made me furious, not because of conforming, since everyone broke the rules or bent them, but mainly for the white upper middle class ideas behind what is appropriate clothing. Esp. the idea about blue jeans. That was all a class decision from the director/headmistress who was this old crone hopelessly out of touch with reality. Other schools were making dress code policy based on real problems like gangs and drugs, and ours was making their policy based on some idea that they could take rich white kids and poorer black kids and make them into a model version of white America from some bygone era. My school was split fifty fifty between white kids and black kids with Asian kids as a minority and Latino kids almost non existent. Oh and when a girl got pregnant they practically forced her out of the school, the way they treated her. It was ridiculous. And all about class and reputation. Made me nuts. I tried conforming my first year too, got nice collared shirts and whatnot. By the end of the year I was wearing flannels and t-shirts and dark colored jeans and got my share of detentions as well.

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