Can a Boy Wear a Skirt to School? | Hacker News Reader

Can a Boy Wear a Skirt to School?

nytimes.com

12 pointsscapegraced23 comments

>School, they say, is a rigorous academic and social training ground for the world of adults and employment.

School is a slave-labor camp whose purposes are 1) to keep the kids off the streets and out of the labor force and 2) to provide jobs for union teachers. Academics are an afterthought at best, usually not even that.

Sure, why not. Mind you, it is going to set him up for ridicule and he shouldn't complain about that (especially not if it is a tutu), but I don't see why not.

Girls can wear pants to school, can't they ?

Thats fine until safety becomes a concern, at which point officials need to step in. We don't let kids do things that can harm them (to some degree anyway) and we need to keep a careful eye on the balance there...

How does wearing a skirt raise safety issues?

Straight from the article...

And safety is a critical concern. In February 2008, Lawrence King, an eighth-grader from Oxnard, Calif., who occasionally wore high-heeled boots and makeup, was shot to death in class by another student.

So it's the victim's fault for dressing like a woman? I'm sure rape victims are at fault for dressing so provocatively, too?

No, not at all. I'd love for this not to be a concern, but unfortunately it turns out that it is. The administrators are responsible for ensuring that the students at the school are safe. Given the existence of bullies and the inability of the school to hire enough administrators to be everywhere at once, they need some other method for keeping students safe. Here are a few options:

1) Find some way to convince bullies to stop bullying and realize how stupid they are.

2) Cameras everywhere and punish people for beating up other kids.

3) Find out what provokes bullies and prevent that from happening.

4) Do nothing.

#1 probably can't be done quickly.

#2 might be reasonable but would be an invasion of privacy in some ways. this is another solution that deserves debate.

#3 is what the schools are doing.

#4 is unacceptable to many parents

So, if you are going to suggest that the school's policy is bad, you must either pick one of the 4 above or suggest a new option. There might well be a better option! If you have one, please please please put it up here.

So, I ask you, what should the schools do?

In order for bullying to stop, the environment must be absolutely toxic to them. If they tease someone for how they dress, the only solution is to encourage that sort of dress in all of the students, as a show of solidarity against the bully. By banning it, you only validate the bully's world view, showing him or her that their "heart was in the right place," but that their methods were lacking. "Don't use violence, use regulation!"

Okay, good answer. I believe I concede the point with just one question (maybe more to come in the morning when my brain is in better condition)...

How long will this take? My guess is that most guys wouldn't feel comfortable dressing in a skirt (or whatever). I don't see this becoming the norm anytime soon. So the administration can encourage this as much as it wants, but until the bully actually feels like he/she is in the minority, nothing will change. In the meantime, bullies will continue to beat up kids.

But, I agree, things should change. (By the way, this is what I believed the whole time. I was just pointing out the safety issues. Also, your previous post was unnecessarily offensive in somehow suggesting that I somehow blame the victims, and I'd ask that in the future you try to get a complete understanding of someone's views before attacking them Thanks in advance!)

Requiring students (male or female) to tie up long hair or not wear loose-fitting clothing when working with power tools in shop class is a safety concern. Requiring long jeans in sheet metal working (to protect from sharp edges) is a safety concern. Removing jewelry before doing electrical work is a safety concern.

Prohibiting peaceful self expression because a jerk may bully about it is blaming the victim, not a (legitimate) safety concern. Safety concerns don't practice sexism.

A safety concern is anything that risks the safety of people. In schools, its anything that risks the safety of the students.

What you are saying is that in this case there are other concerns (self expression) and those trump safety. Thats a reasonable view. However, the school, and many people, don't believe that the school should prioritize self expression over safety. I'm sure many parents don't feel that they should either.

To say that the school's concern is not legitimate is unrealistic. Safety concerns do practice sexism all the time. Its unfortunate, but true. Most people are more scared of a woman walking home drunk at 2:00 AM than a man doing the same.

Edit: Deleted my last line.

The reason that kids would bully male students that would wear dresses to school or female students that wear pants to school is precisely because the administration forbids it.

The administration forbidding it is just confirming in their minds that the behavior of these students is not normal and worthy of derision. In cases where those in authority do not treat it as out of order, the students are far less likely to bully the child.

Don't kid yourself. It's much more primitive than that. There have always been, and likely always will be, those who torment anyone who deviates from the norm. Children can be especially cruel to each other. Kids in my school didn't yell "Fag!" to certain individuals as a way to buck authority. They did it because they were mean-spirited and wanted to bully someone.

The solution is eliminating the dress code entirely and setting up kids to believe there is a "right" and a "wrong" way to dress. Once crossdressing seems natural and acceptable, kid'll stop being immature about it. The more you try to say something's wrong, the most people you'll unintentionally hurt.

I also believe that the failings of the group are always the failings of the leadership. If bullying is rampant in a school, it's because the school administration doesn't do enough to punish bullying. By banning cross-dressing, they only reinforce the bully's belief system.

I wear a kilt on occasion. I wore it to work one day. Technically, I was compliant with the dress code, as there was no mention of sex anywhere in the dress code document.

its a free country

its [sic] a free country

... but if you read the article, you'll see that it apparently isn't a free school system.

True, but he can wear it to school, maybe not in school.

That said, I really think schools have enough of a problem with kids teasing each other to go and invite more of that with cross-dressing pupils.

In plenty of countries they have school uniforms simply to reduce the friction between kids due to wealth differences between parents, a side effect is that there is much less teasing for not wearing the 'right' kind of branded clothing, jewelery and so on.

This kid is just basically demanding something that is not going to give him any real satisfaction, it's just going to cause a bunch more trouble so I think the school is probably right in their decision.

As for the road to school, that's his own problem, he can wear there whatever he wants, but it is quite ok with me if the school asks that their pupils do not engage in dressing up in such a way that it will cause trouble, I'm sure they have their hands full as it is.

If everyone wears the same clothes, they'll just use something else as markers of identity (and wealth). Maybe the kind of mobile phone they have, jewelry, or some other minor detail where they're allowed some options.

If someone feels a need to bully someone, they'll find a way and a reason. The solution to the problem isn't to try to remove all the "reasons" for bullying, it's to do something about the bullies (sp?).

Most schools ban jewellery, and mobile phones are not allowed to be taken outside of a student's bag. You're arguing that every single student who wears less fashionable clothes and is bullied or singled out would've been bullied anyway, even if a uniform was made compulsory. My experience is that wouldn't be true in quite a few cases. There doesn't have to be a single golden bullet solution to bullying. Many small ideas put together can be very effective.

I'm pretty sure that bullying in general isn't something you do to make someone behave properly, it's something you do to scratch an itch. Forcing everyone to dress the same won't scratch that itch for the bully, but it will definitely make a lot of students who are used to dress the way they like upset. I'm not sure that the benefits are bigger than the drawbacks.

(And the mobile phone and jewelry were just examples, I'm sure you can visit any school with a dress code and ask the students how to tell the rich from the poor by some physical property and get a quick answer)

Instituting a uniform is quite effective in cutting down on this, but it's not foolproof. Having attended a school where uniforms were mandatory there was still discrimination based on the brand name of the uniform.

The uniform code basically consisted of stating the style, color and form of the items of clothing to wear. Leaving it up to parents to buy clothing that suited their budget (within the uniform guidelines). So kids would be mocked if they used a lesser known brand name instead of say, dockers.

I think current rules have been made stricter so now the school shirts are sold by the school itself.

Granted, it does solve all the problems of kids just coming to school dressed in attire that would be the cause of derision, either because the kid is eccentric or because the parents are neglectful.

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