Posted on 11/28/2003 2:57:06 PM PST by Mr. Silverback
Don't public schools have dress codes anymore? My elementary school had a strict dress code, my junior high a stricter one, and my high school had an extraordinarily strict dress code, which even I (I dress EXTREMELY modestly) violated a couple of times by wearing a skirt that was an inch over my knees. If you violated the dress code, you got sent home...no ifs, ands, or buts. Has public school changed THAT much in the last ten years?
I mean, gawd...we couldn't even wear HATS in ANY public school I attended. We couldn't even wear sunglasses on our heads.
In fourth grade, the ties were no longer mandatory but you still couldn't wear jeans or sneakers. At this time, they started toning down the Christmas activities and the liberalism began seeping into the cirriculum. For example, textbooks started explaining how the evil white Europeans destroyed the Indians and so forth. Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer books were removed from the classroom because they had what they called "racial epithets" in them.
By seventh grade (1974-75), jeans and sneakers were finally allowed. And if you didn't wear them, you were deemed by your classmates to be "uncool" and you got harrassed. By 1976-77 (high school), just about anything went clothingwise. Boys started showing up with ripped jeans and Aerosmith and Kiss T-shirts, girls started showing their belly buttons and cleavage (even back then).
During my high school years, there was enormous pressure to wear what was called "designer jeans", usually Jordache jeans that were $40 or $50 a pair (outrageous back in those days). Some of the kids (boys) started wearing platform shoes and women-style clothing (like Elton John and David Bowie). My family could never afford them so I was perpetually "uncool" in my department store Levis and button down shirts (that I still wear today).
So I would like to see dress codes reinstituted. Take the pressure off the kids to impress their peers and get them concentrated back on reading and arithmetic.
You left school the spring before I started kindergarten. We weren't required to dress very conservatively; we were small children (five and six years old) so we were allowed to wear short dresses, shorts and t-shirts, sandals, etc. Looking back at the photos, none of us were inappropriately attired for our age. Makeup was completely banned in my elementary school; I remember four girls in my sixth grade class being marched to the girls' bathroom to scrub makeup off their faces. There were NO exceptions to this rule. This occurred in 1987. The principal at my school carried a paddle with him everywhere in K-1, but we got a new principal for 2-4 who didn't. The principal for 5-6 was a bit tougher. Individual teachers still paddled kids in my elementary school as recently as 1987. The vice principal in my junior high paddled kids in 1988 and 1989. I don't think paddling occurred at all in my high school, but since I wasn't a troublemaker, I really couldn't tell you for certain!
As for Christmas parties...we didn't really have them, but probably not for the reasons you think. The area of Dallas where we lived has a substantial Jewish community; my kindergarten class was over 50% Jewish. We had a Christmas/Hannukah party that year, but after that my school switched to having parties for Halloween and Valentine's Day instead of Christmas and Easter, since about 50% of every TAG class was Jewish. (TAG = Talented and Gifted. The TAG class was entirely composed of locals. The kids forcibly bused in were never in the TAG classes, but attended the same Halloween and Valentine's Day parties that we did.) I never saw anything wrong with it and I still don't. In high school the percentage of Jewish kids in my class was watered down by kids from other feeder schools, so even though my H.S. had the nickname "Hebrew High" it was only about 1/6 Jewish. We had a Christmas pageant freshman year and sang Hannukah songs as well as Christmas songs, and had a skit about Hannukah. I thought it was a fair representation of the student body. We didn't have any Christmas parties of any kind after my freshman year, but I think that was probably because it was a major hassle for the teachers and administrators to cram all 1,000 of us into an auditorium designed for 700 people.
In fourth grade, the ties were no longer mandatory but you still couldn't wear jeans or sneakers. At this time, they started toning down the Christmas activities and the liberalism began seeping into the cirriculum. For example, textbooks started explaining how the evil white Europeans destroyed the Indians and so forth. Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer books were removed from the classroom because they had what they called "racial epithets" in them.
By the time I was that age, we were taught that some skirmishes with native Americans were the fault of the whites, some weren't, and that diseases like smallpox (the native Americans had no immunity whatsoever to smallpox) devastated large swathes of native American communities. I think the view we got was fair and balanced. And Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer were both required reading at my junior high school, and I don't remember anyone complaining. This was in 1987-1988.
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