Distracted by Dress Codes

by Lorraine Esposito on July 10, 2012

in You as a person,You in your community,Your kids

Article first published as Distracting Dress Codes on Technorati.

Did you hear the one about dress codes?

The dress code at our school is simple:
If you’re not taken for one of the teachers, you’re in trouble.

Fear isn’t funny

Fear is distracting, and nothing distracts a teen more than worry that she’ll be ridiculed by her friends or mistaken for an outsider.  As testament, consider the recent protest, “Slutty Wednesday,” held outside Stuyvesant High School, a highly regarded public school on the lower east side of Manhattan in New York City.  Think of all the time and energy that went into coordinating this rally of several hundred students. What were they unable to do because they were distracted by a dress code?

Last fall, Stuyvesant enacted a dress code that restricted students to a clothing standard deemed appropriate to school administrators. For students, the major points of contention seem to be fashion, comfort, and consistency.  Could Stuyvesant administrators be floundering in a generation gap?  Seems like deja’ vu; the ‘60s come alive all over again.

Control is an Illusion

Dress codes are, at best, well-intentioned maneuvers for control.  Control isn’t leadership it’s coercion, and if we’ve learned nothing else from our cultural history, let’s at least acknowledge that control is an illusion.  Adults are tasked with leadership, and to truly lead our kids we first have to deal with our own adultism.  Perhaps the better alternative for Stuyvesant would be a democratic process that invites all stakeholders, parents, students, teachers, and administrators, into the decision-making process.  Sure, it’s time consuming, but then again so is teaching critical thinking, empathy, and ethical reasoning. Taking time to engage the community pays big dividends in the end because it not only produces a set of policies for which little enforcement is needed, it prevents distractions allowing students to focus on learning math, science, and all the rest.

Keeping Our Promises

Adults who influence kids made promises to them; promises to teach them the important lessons so that they could thrive one day on their own.  These promises are about the big picture not about hem lengths.  It seems the Stuyvesant community has been distracted taking their eyes off the ultimate prize.

Related Articles:  Freedom To Disagree, Thinking in Shades of Gray

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Tagged as: challenge, choice, communication, Education, fear, Influence, Leadership, Parenting Promises

  • beckyblanton

    This was going on when I was in high school and girls weren’t allowed to wear slacks!! If you have to have a dress code, let the kids design it and figure it out. They’re more likely to obey it, respect it and understand it. You can’t control hormones. Even girls in sweat pants and sweat shirts are going to attract the attention of teenaged boys. You’re right. It’s distracting to education, but it does seem to have motivated the teens to band together to work to change something they don’t like — which is a good thing…!!

    • http://www.peacemaker-coach.com Lorraine Esposito

      As good as the kid-to-kid community building is, its going to be about that bad for the adult-to-kid relationships … unless of course the adults open their eyes and let the kids in to the process. Thanks Becky — love your comments.

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