I think the rule should be “does this item of clothing/hairstyle effect this student or another student’s ability to learn?” Being that that’s the purpose of schools
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A decent rule, if the main purpose of schools was only to get kids to learn the specific subjects being taught.
But the main function of schooling is to prepare the majority of the kids for a lifetime of citizenship and employment in all ways parents can’t or don’t.
In that light, uniform’s bad (won’t train kids how to pick appropriate attire, a valuable life skill parents often don’t teach) and enforcing clothing-appropriateness is good.
I was at a wedding recently. The groomsmen all had rental suits and ties. After over half an hour, I was still the only one with a tied tie: everyone else was still watching youtube tutorials trying to figure it out.
As I despise ties, I’m still unsure if that’s something for me to cry about, or cheer.
In the US, the police don’t walk around with switches to beat people dressed inappropriately. There’s a ton of lee-way to what you can go out in public wearing, and I don’t really feel it should be any different in school. As long as an overt threat isn’t being made with the attire, (eg a tshirt with something like “Kill the Spics” or something like that), then we should let the damn kids wear whatever they want. That’s how it’ll be when they’re adults anyway. You might be denied entry to a fancy golf club in shorts and flipflops, but that’s not really “public” anyway.
When these students grow up, it’s themselves and their peers who will determine what “Appropriate attire” is anyway. So why should the olds be the ones to enforce fashion?
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If you think of schools as public spaces, then your comment makes sense. But if you think of them as workplaces, then you might want to ask yourself how many employers in the employer-friendly US don’t enforce appropriate clothing. Loss of livelihood is often considered a far harsher punishment than a mere beating.
There’s a cultural nuance here in that, as far as I can remember from my own experience, elementary and high school was pretty much a daycare center for overworked parents. While college was an egalitarian workplace where nobody cared what you wore and who you’re friends with.
High school isn’t just a place to be formally educated. It’s where you spend most of your day, without any choice, and the least they can do is let you express yourself. It’s not like students really choose to be in school. So as long as it’s essentially a prison but with more forced-labor, we might as well teach students the important lesson that they can become activists and can express themselves, even thought there may be certain consequences from other students.
The problem with censoring this kind of shirt isn’t so much that it’s trying to limit sexual expression in itself. What’s really galling is that the straight/heteronormative messaging gets a free pass all the time because it’s considered “normal” and doesn’t even hit an administrator’s radar until it’s overt imagery of sex acts etc, whereas having a t-shirt that says “Big Gay Ice Cream” is somehow nefarious and transgressive while, say a t-shirt like this:
Prominently displaying Jennifer Lopez who is, for better or worse a very popular cultural sex-symbol is totally fine, since her boobs or buttocks aren’t showing.
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Good points.
I guess it depends on whether you feel that schools are there for training students to be good little workers, or bad little rebels.
US schools are run by governments, and it’s been a long time since the US government (or any other, really) has made any secret that it wants the former, not the latter. So that’s what schools are. Not daycare centres: conditioning centres for a life of passively obedient employment and consumerism.
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The thing here is: It’s innocuous to reasonable people, but inflammatory to pearl-clutching religious fundamentalists. So prohibiting such attire is essentially saying to the fundamentalists: Your offense at a few words in a particular order, words having nothing to do with you, is far more important to placate than said student’s right to self-expression.
The correct and just response when a fundamentalist takes offense to this kind of speech is “You’re offended? So fucking what? Why should that make us change what we do?”
Edited for spelling and grammar.
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Hear hear. I don’t actually disagree with any of this. I’m just saying that I can understand why pearl-clutching teachers would forbid it as such.
Personally, I’d be OK with kids wearing hardcore porn on their tshirts. I just can’t see it going down well in our society. But I guess if we slowly push back at the layers of silliness, eventually we’ll get to a level where anyone can wear anything anywhere, and it won’t be considered taboo. Someday.
And hey - we’re a lot better than some countries already!
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What classifies as a reasonable person? Somebody who only agrees with you perhaps? Why would it
have nothing to do with religious people, if it is a slogan on a tshirt that is worn openly in public, everybody
who sees it, reads it, would form an opinion, so it does indeed affect everybody and besides, is that not the purpose of a slogan on a tshirt, its a statement of your opinions to everyone. I have been reading your previous posts and you seem very intolerant and hate filled against religious people. The Pope is not pleased.
This is crazy, hardcore porn on tshirts as normal. If you keep pushing boundaries, where does it stop? There will be people wanting child porn and beastiality tshirts, it won’t matter if it is illegal or not, encouraging people to push the boundaries is an attempt to swing the law in their favor. The Pope is not pleased.
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Firstly, fuck the pope. He’s protecting child rapists from prosecution in numerous countries and the vatican’s sovereignty is a joke based in superstition.
In a case like this, a reasonable person is anyone who doesn’t take this t-shirt as a threat. This t-shirt isn’t a threat to you, or me, or anyone. It’s a piece of speech that isn’t relevant to you, and doesn’t threaten you. What you see as a nefarious stance against your sexuality is viewed by reasonable people as this kid proclaiming they like a popular ice cream shop.
I don’t hate religious people. I hate stupid things they do in the name of their religions. I hate religious dogmas because they command people to harm each other. Even Jesus said
"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn "‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law-- a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’
“Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of
me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of
me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”
Matthew 10:34-38
So, here we have a New Testament basis for several detestable phenomena in christianity today: We have the foundation of the massive persecution complex, where you have some of the most powerful people in the country unironically bitching and moaning about how persecuted and awfully they’re treated, when most of the discrimination is done by those very same people. We also have the basis for christianity’s cult set-up, since jesus demands that everyone only follow him even when it means cutting yourself off from your family and friends. Jesus wanted people to be dependent on his cult, not on each other.
Christians keep talking about what a cool dude jesus was and how the whole plan was “dying for everyone’s sins”, but if you read the bible in the order it’s written, and read all of it, jesus is both, obviously a myth, and actually is a real dick motivated by racism, just like most people of the time.
TL;DR, No, I don’t hate christians, but I do hate christianity and religion in general. If you haven’t found numerous things to criticize about christianity, you’re probably not looking at it very hard.
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It sounds to me like you’re conflating gay people with pedophiles. How disgusting of you.
I could slander too, but I prefer to stick to facts that I can back up, rather than direct character assassination like you’re doing here.
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The phrase separation of church and state is not in the Constitution or in any of its amendments. It came from a private letter from President Thomas Jefferson to protect the church from the (federal) government, not the government from the church. Sadly, uneducated people have, and still do, misuse this quote to further their own aims. Please research this quote properly, then use it correctly in future. The Pope is not pleased.
So your against child rape but not against raping the Pope. By the way, when I state the Pope is not pleased, that is just my catch phrase for me, my handle is Pope John Paul
You’re intentionally ignoring my commonly-used euphamism. But here, let me spell it out for you:
All the popes should be tried in the Hague for numerous crimes against humanity including shielding child rapists from justice in the countries where they operated. Also, he should be on trial for practicing medicine without a license, seeing as multiple popes have spoken to the people of Africa directly telling them that condoms spread AIDS, when the medical science shows the opposite. The pope has blood on his hands. Your pope is a disgrace, whether it’s Francis, or John Paul II, or Benedict, they’re all doing evil and harmful things, and are doing it with the entirely undeserved authority of religious leadership.
So no, don’t literally fuck the pope. Metaphorically fuck the pope. We need to literally arrest the pope.
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The tshirt is a statement of an opinion. You state it doesn’t threaten me, but in the next sentence your saying it is a stance against my sexuality which, presumably, does offend me. You contradict yourself.
The Pope is not pleased
@tobinl - what do you have to say on the subject?
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Yeesh just cause I hang out in other threads…
I find the shirt itself pretty awesome. What the school dress code is may possibly exclude the shirt but how it was handled was very bad. If I remember my high school days we probably would have been told yes we get it but that is not allowed, go home get a new shirt, consider your wrists slapped and get out of my office. Especially if it was a first offense.
I know at the sprogs school that slogans are not allowed but I don’t notice outside of people with shirts that say things like ‘satan is a doodie head’ or such. I can’t get all in a huff about orange hair,what kind of jeans, etc. anymore. They will have to give it up and look reasonably groomed, etc for gainful employment. Mind you I think it has pretty cool that lately you can see purple/green/pink hair in a lot of places and on a lot of people that I would not have seen 20 years ago.
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You really are having a hard time understanding how what one person feels can have nothing to do with you right? Just because someone is gay or trans or really likes ice cream, doesn’t mean they therefore hate the people who are straight, cis, or dislike ice cream.
Is there any chance you’ve been working in a movie theater the past few years?
Because you’re a master at projection.
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Well when the pope stops protecting child rapists, i might listen to him. Until then you might want to work on your observation skills and not that at no point did i mention the constitution or any legal entity of any sort. The point i made however still stands. The bible and or the church have no authority over public schools in the US
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