Culture clash as American school bans kilt

scotsman.com ^ | 12/06/05 | WILL SPRINGER

[Tax-chick]

First look, I thought your comment said "different kinds or CULTS of kilts." Reading in, I guess :-).

[wideawake]

Correct, but it is an odd kilt indeed that would hang the way his does in the photo and still be properly pleated.

[Churchillspirit]

How can you tell that the dress was leather?

[Malacoda]

I think you mean he's missing his sporran. (Gaelic for "ball protector," according to my Scots dad.)

So, girls can dress like low-rent hoochie-mamas, but a gentleman of Scots descent can't wear his cultural birthright?

[DustyMoment]

If they can ban the kilt, then they can ban baggy jeans, jeans around the butts, hispanic big and/or greasy hair, big nails, Asian pencil boxes, whatever!

I like the guy's kilt, and kilts all. I'm also a Scot descendant (directly, no combo ancestry), so I realize I'm fond of kilts for ancestry reasons, but...

Well said!! I'm a Euro-mutt with Anglo-Saxon, Scots, German, a little Spanish and who knows what else. I was prepared to agree with the principal before I read the article. Now I'm on the kid's side. The principal is an idiot and needs to be educated by this kid and his family.

Again, the blanket intolerance of government schools strikes to make educators appear to be as dumb as a bucket of hair.

[VanDeKoik]

If we are to get bent out of shape if someone came to school in African dress or Asain or Middle Eastern, how can you support this guy doing the same thing?

[Mrs.Nooseman]

LOL.

It happens,been there done that.:)

[Churchillspirit]

Sorry.....a great kilt and a tam would be ridiculous and certainly not formal wear.

[Physicist]

If someone had worn a kufi and a kente cloth, they wouldn't have dared to object.

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

Do not see a blade on his waist or in his boot. Sorry, if you wear a weapon it's a kilt. If there is no weapon, you're merely a lad in a plaid skirt.

[wideawake]

Sorry.....a great kilt and a tam would be ridiculous and certainly not formal wear.

Tell that to Scotsmen attending formal events in the UK.

[rattrap]

"but you can't go in here looking like a clown.

Right about then he would have started nursing his new shiner.

[taxcontrol]

Sorry, your assertion that there needs to be a sporran in order to complete a kilt, along with your assertion that it is too long is not supported by historical fact.

[Campion]

How can you tell that the dress was leather?

Not this girl's dress -- the one I observed on my son's recent date to a school dance.

[Churchillspirit]

The sporran actually serves as a wallet, holder of keys etc. - there being no pockets in a proper kilt.

However, as a friend of mine observed - if you get mugged you might actually enjoy it!

[Xenalyte]

Kilts are indeed formal wear. But the wee lad lacks a sporran!

[Churchillspirit]

Looks like the kilt is poorly made and is too big for him.

[Bones75]

That looks more like a table cloth or a catholic school girls' skirt than a kilt.

[taxcontrol]

A kilt is USUALLY wool but there is no requirement that it be so. As to the pleating, there are many styles of pleating some of which only have pleats in the rear of the attire, which in this picture, you would not see.

[DustyMoment]

It seems many of you missed this part of the story:

He saved up enough money and bought a traditional red Clan MacRae tartan to wear to special events.

Kilts don't come cheap. Nor, I suspect, do the sporrans. I respect this kid for his spirit and the fact that he and his family have spent 4 years researching their Scottish heritage. He looks very respectable in the kilt - far better, I would voucher, than many of his classmates in their tuxedos or "appropriate" apparel.