Posted on 01/11/2006 8:45:18 AM PST by flixxx
Published Wednesday January 11, 2006
Rainbow Rowell: You sent my kid home for what?
BY RAINBOW ROWELL
WORLD-HERALD COLUMNIST
If my kid got sent home from school for wearing ripped jeans, I would send him right to his room . . .
So he wouldn't hear me go ballistic on his principal.
Are you serious, Bellevue East? Sending students home because their frayed jeans are disrupting class?
I'll tell you what's more disrupting to class: sending students home.
Especially for something as innocuous as wearing holey jeans.
Send my kid home if he's picking fights or packing heat. Send him home to change if he's wearing something vulgar or revealing.
Send him home if he's not following the rules . . .
But don't make rules just for the sake of having rules.
School officials say the rips and tears are distracting and an obstacle to order and discipline . . . How is that possibly true?
Who in 2006 is distracted by frayed jeans? Who in 1996 or 1986 or 1976?
You'd have to go pretty far back to find someone who would be scandalized by a ripped knee. (I keep picturing an over-the-top square in a "Monkees" episode. The kind of character who calls everybody, "Darn dirty hippies.")
You could argue that rips in the underwear region are distracting. Here's a defensible rule: No holes near your unmentionables.
That's actually close to the rule proposed by Bellevue East students. About 200 skipped class Monday to demand a less restrictive dress code, one that would ban tears only above the skirt line.
I'm pretty impressed by Bellevue East students. I can't imagine 200 kids at my high school being organized enough to stage a protest and actually following through with it.
The kids who skipped class at Bellevue East are kids who normally go to class. Who care about getting in trouble. That shows how important this is to them.
What is more important to a teenager than freedom of expression?
At 16, 17, you feel like an adult, but you're still treated like a child. You follow everyone else's rules all day long.
You treasure the decisions that are mostly your own, what you wear, what music you listen to. That's how you express yourself. It's who you are.
Public schools should limit that expression as little as possible - only when a kid is actually causing a problem.
These kids' jeans aren't causing problems. Did you see the two girls who ended up on the front page of Friday afternoon's World-Herald after their ripped jeans got them sent home? They looked clean, healthy and athletic. Fashionable, but not fashion victims.
If I were raising a daughter, I would love for her to dress that comfortably modest, in ripped jeans and a soccer T-shirt layered over a long-sleeved shirt.
In this ultra low-rise world, any girl who finds jeans that don't leave a four-inch gap between her waistband and her shirtwaist should be applauded - not sent home.
I keep trying to guess what secret reason Bellevue East might have to suddenly start enforcing a ripped jeans rule that's been on the books for years. Is there some Bellevue street gang that identifies itself with ripped jeans? (In my high school, the gang members wore the nicest jeans. Never ripped, always ironed.)
There has to be a reason. You can't tell an 18-year-old to obey the rules just because you said so. Because you're the boss.
Listen here, Buster, them's the rules and you'll obey 'em and you'll like it. Or else.
That isn't speaking with authority. That's just being a bully.
Still I thought it may be of interest to Free Republic patrons and generate some discussion.
What if the kids are wearing their pj's???? Which alot of them do now.
Send him home if he's packing heat? Once again, no adult in charge here..........
Another strong argument for uniforms....
I DETEST that fad. Not much creepier than seeing a mom taking her teen daughter to the grocery store, with teen wearing clothes designed to be worn to bed. And don't get me started on the "HOTTIE" or some such inane letters all across the butt.
A warning would probably be in order a few at that.
Jeans with holes are sold that way new at present.
Unless there is long standing uniform enforcement of the rule, it seems excessive to send a student home rather than give them a warning (which may have happened before the article doesn't say).
Granted I intend to send my kids to private school so there'd be little risk of them wearing a new pair of pre-ripped jeans anyway.
*I* wear ripped jeans and always have. I grew up very poor. Having a pair of jeans that *fit* was hard enough a chore. Finding jeans at the second-hand store that fit and had no wear was impossible. It was the one thing that I didn't have to feel bad or out of place about. (And I still don't.)
My personal peeve is parents that let their children wear shirts etc with the words porn star written on them.
Hey, Rainbow -- think about what you wrote. We'll wait.
I vote they shut down the school and tell all the students to go look for jobs, while "expressing their individuality" wearing ripped clothing. Now that would be an educational experience!
With a first name of "Rainbow" she no doubt is.
Hey Rainbow, you should be thankful your son's school has a dress code.
Sheesh. Back in HS, I was an Honor Student and NEVER got in trouble. One day I wore a pair of jeans that had ONE hole at the knee. The Asst. Principal actually called my Mom, who said, "Fine, send him home to change. I'll decide whether or not he comes back." She was, to say the least, PO'd at him for even having an issue with it.
Back when I was a kid the rich kids always wore the fancy designer jeans that were as new as possible to look. The kids like me without a lot of money wore worn out jeans that were almost white, our dress jeans where just white with no holes in them.
Sure, let the idiots run their mouths at the teachers. The teachers have no authority in school as it is. Give every obnoxious parent a license to chew out teachers. Then the kids can grow up to be dumbasses like Rainbow.
Try 1966. Anyone with jeans, ripped or not, would have been sent home. Sneakers were for gym class only and tee shirts were undergarments, not fashion statements. You would even be sent home for having your shirt tail out, (I was), and this was a inner city public high school, not some prepie academy.
The school just wasn't the least bit enlightened, I guess. It also lacked metal detectors, police in the halls, daily fights and fearful resentful students.
Further one has to wonder what kind of values a person has who could send a 13 year old home for wearing stylish jeans with holes in them and yet happily give the same kid a condom and a lesson on the specifics of different types of heterosexual and homosexual sex.
Uniforms. Reason number 1,256 to pull your child out of public school...
This lady is nuts. She needs to reevaluate things to get upset about. While I do homeschool, and I have three boys who seem to relish wearing the knees out in their jeans in an amazingly short time, when they need to look neat, for any reason, we have clothes that aren't play clothes without holes. If the schools have a dress code, it needs to be followed. Uniforms are a great idea. Cheaper, too. Kids can wear whatever they want at home, they go to school to learn, not be fashionable. If only schools were as interested in a good, well-rounded education as they are about clothes, thing would be different.
Rules are rules, like it or lump it.
Good parents would never send their kids to school in clothes they KNEW broke the rules.
Unless they were trying to get attention.
Looks like rainbow forgot her meds...
This seems silly. I remember when I went to school, about 15 years ago, and kids were wearing ripped jeans (it was IN in the 80's, big time) and no one complained at all.
I could think of more offending ways of dressing, that should require kids being sent home to change. Some of those "belly shirts" that girls insist on wearing at age 13-14. Parents shouldn't even let their girls out of the house with some of the revealing things I've seen them walking around in and it makes you wonder about their parenting skills elsewhere.
But I digress. Luckily the schools where I live require uniforms. White polo or dress shirt and black pants (dockers or jean), with nothing ripped of course. This way too, no one can possibly be original/sarc
If you challenge the prevailing rules, expect a reaction sooner or later.
Thank you.
turn it around - you sent your kid to school dressed in what?
Exactly! This is reason #38 why private schools work, and public schools don't.
In a private school, the principal and the parent would have a talk...a short one.
"Your child doesn't have to attend here, Ms. Nitwit."
It's called a "dress code."
Welcome to planet Earth, deary.
Grow up and deal with it.
News flash, moron...
HA!... jammies to school. Sometimes we just stay in mom's bed when I am hurting.
I take my very modest teenage daughter to Sears a lot for clothes. She really likes long skirts. And Sears has good sales.
For a dress code to work, it has to be reasonable. It also has to have some bearing on the students' ability to learn, or the staff's ability to teach. I don't see how holes in jeans affect either.
Two words: church picnic. It's a proven fact that fewer than half of the women at a church picnic will be dressed like hookers...
Good point. They should have quoted the principle saying, "Ripped jeans are a terrible distraction in fisting class."
+1
I went to school with some dirt poor kids, no one noticed tears in jeans.
I used to have iron on patches on top of older patches on the knees of my jeans as a kid.
I have a well worn pair now, that are almost translucent.
Orange jumpsuits for everyone!
Sounds like the kids are spoiled brats just like their parents; not much new there.
Just one more moron my child won't have to be exposed to in his education....
2 Words For ya:
SCHOOL UNIFORM
You can't dress yourself presentably, you shouldn't be at school... Take your frayed jeans to the skate park, school is for learning.
This site has more crusty old coots than Grampa Simpson's retirement home. Who is wearing ripped jeans hurting and how is it disrupting class? Dressing in revealing clothing for girls or wearing clothes with profanity, inappropriate content or racist symbols should be kept out of schools because they disrupt, but jeans with a bullethole size rip shouldn't be cause for suspension. Look at the lovefest siding with public school administration here. I'll bet not a single one of you have been to Abercrombie to buy pants, almost all of them have holes (men's). As long as the hole is not in an indecent place, like the crotch or buttocks, I don't see how it is very distracting. I'm sure in your day, seeing a hole in pants would be something to stare at and probably would distract you but I assure you it's qite different now.
"At 16, 17, you feel like an adult, but you're still treated like a child. You follow everyone else's rules all day long."
News flash......
I'm 50 plus and I still "follow everyone else's rules all day long."
Get over it!!
I have no problem with schools imposing dress requirements, but I do agree with the columnist that sending kids home over relatively innocuous violations like this one are silly. Don't they have study hall anymore? How about yard duty? After-school detention? Lunch detention? Sending a kid home is a reward...you're giving him a day to play video games, sleep, or watch movies. Making him pick up trash or sit in a classroom for an hour or two with nothing to do is a far more effective punishment for kids that age.
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