Dress Codes? Seriously?

While this curated article was originally written in 2010, the subject of school dress codes continues rearing its ugly head – if anything even more frequently now as the Trump-empowered autocratic-fascist contingent in our culture feel confident in their victory over the evil forces of individual identity. There are few more overt and clear mechanisms of deranged, malicious powermongering than bullying a little kid for how they look. While this odious, evil behavior is most often directed at young women showing “too much skin” they’re not the only ones targeted. Anyone who gets behind this particular type of oppression and suppression is a mortal enemy of everything good in the world.

Now here’s a story that’ll get you raging against the machine like a gutter punk in short order.  It seems that a four year old boy in Texas has been suspended from school…for having long hair.

The school district responsible for this pornographically obscene attempt at powermongering, mandatory indoctrination to the status quo, and non-consensual behavior modification is Mesquite, Texas.  According to the news story from the AP, their dress code is justified as follows:

“students who dress and groom themselves neatly, and in an acceptable and appropriate manner, are more likely to become constructive members of the society in which we live.”

I have a whole list of problems just with this sentence and the thought processes behind it.  Who is to decide what constitutes “neatly,” “acceptable,” “appropriate,” and “constructive?”  Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Jim Jones, and Bill O’Reilly all dress well.  I would hardly call any of them ‘acceptable,’ ‘appropriate,’ or ‘constructive.’

And let’s look at the other side, shall we?  In the early 19th century the works of Beethoven were derided as ‘longhair music.’  If our world only counted as valuable that which the Mesquite School Board finds acceptable, here’s a quick list off the top of my head of people who would not have done the things they did.  Each of these people was, at one time or another, longhaired, unacceptable, and inappropriate:

• Beethoven
• Edgar Allen Poe
• H.P. Lovecraft
• George Orwell
• H. G. Wells
• Robert Heinlein
• Issas Asimov
• Jesus
• Moses
• Abraham
• Lot, and especially his daughters
• Hippocrates
• Socrates
• Homer
• Shakespeare
• The entire musical genres of blues, jazz, rock and roll, rock, rap, hip hop, country after 1956 or so, and all their derivatives, plus half their roots, and every artist in them from Robert Johnson to Miley Cyrus.
• George Washington
• Thomas Jefferson
• Abraham Lincoln
• John F. Kennedy
• Barack Obama
• and thousands more

While I recognize the need for the school district and their teachers and employees to be able to maintain order, I submit that it would be much more valuable an exercise for an educational body to work diligently at the task of teaching kids to understand WHY maintaining order is important, and WHAT actual order is (versus sullen compliance under duress), and then the kids will tend to choose and respect order to a healthy extend (and to reject it to an equally healthy extent). 

It is very possible to have a mob of angry, well-dressed schoolchildren trash a school. 

It’s equally possible for a bunch of long-haired, starry-eyed idealists to change the course of human history forever and create the greatest framework of human liberty ever known.

Across our nation our schools are failing miserably to educate our children.  This has been a problem for generations, and it continues to be a growing problem that long ago reached epic proportions.  Not only are we falling behind the rest of the world in the classic “three r’s,” but five minutes on the ‘net or reviewing current popular culture trends will make clear that we’re failing to teach deductive or inductive logic, ethics, critical thinking, complex reasoning, independent thought, or genuine self-respect (as opposed to regurgitated slogans from 12-step groups that kids just roll their eyes at), and in some families we’ve been doing so for five generations or more.

I am hard-pressed to think of any recent example that more clearly and completely demonstrates Where And How We Have Gone Wrong than this story.  “YOU!!  FOUR YEAR OLD!! YOU ARE DOOMED TO A LIFETIME OF INCOMPLETE EDUCATION BECAUSE YOUR MOM THINKS YOU LOOK CUTE WITH BANGS!!”

The best part is the actual dress code, which you can find here. (Click the paragraph headings, and don’t feel bad – it took me a minute, too.)

Do me a favor.  See that little “share” button up at the top of the page?  Click on it, and share this with everyone you know.  Enough is enough.  I can’t and won’t speak for anyone else, but I’m sick to death of seeing the “land of the free” usurped by a collection of self-important, mediocre failures, lacking in passion and clarity of thought and consideration of others while loudly decrying everyone else’s ignorance and selfishness.  Seriously.  Spread this around.  Enough is Enough.

Great things are rarely, if ever, comfortable.  Nor are they generally safe, acceptable, appropriate, or neat.  The United States Constitution was conceived of, written by, defended by, and ultimately enacted by a collection of longhaired miscreants who had the unmitigated gall to think for themselves.  That gall, that drive, that chutzpah, that underdog-to-the-top dream of living comfortably simply by being who you are and doing what you do best and enjoy…that is America.  Every last bit of it.  Not one single man, woman, or child among us would be here – would even exist as we are – if it wasn’t for the long-haired, the socially unacceptable, the ones who refused to let others think for them, and this blue-nosed attempt to turn children into little automatons is child abuse on it’s face, and absolutely un-American at it’s heart.

I will not stoop to speculating on the personal psychological defects that drive the individuals responsible for writing and enforcing this policy; I don’t know what individuals are personally responsible, and if I did know their names I know nothing about them personally.  The individuals involved should not be attacked personally by word or deed; they are merely the mindless yeast-like propagators of the failed system that spawned them.  Anything directed at them other than genuine pity is about as useful and meaningful as spanking a dog dropping because it’s on the living room rug.

(They SHOULD, of course, be immediately removed from their positions, along with all their friends, family, college roommates, and so forth whom they have hired, and replaced with competent personnel.  That’s not a personal issue; it’s a functional one.)

But I know that they are wrong.  Wrongest, even.  This whole situation is a perfect encapsulation of the nature and scope of our failures in education over multiple generations. 

Dearest School Board, and all the School Boards like you:  Your job is to teach children to THINK, not to OBEY.  Children who can think, will obey any rule that makes sense to them…and if you are incapable of explaining the rules to them without falling back on “because I said so,” then you are a miserable failure as an educator and should retire immediately.  If you and everyone like you clears the system, those of us who believe that teaching should be among the highest-paid, best-rewarded, and most-respected positions in any developed society can begin making our case credibly.

My forever longhaired, unacceptable, inappropriate, and unconstructive thanks in advance for your collective compliance.