"Among other requirements, all students must wear a unisex polo shirt and closed-toe shoes; '[e]xcessive or radical haircuts and colors' are prohibited; and boys are forbidden from wearing jewelry. Female students are required to wear a 'skirt,' 'jumper,' or 'skort.' In contrast, boys must wear shorts or pants... In 2015, plaintiff Bonnie Peltier, the mother of a female kindergarten student at CDS, informed [the founder of the school, Baker A. Mitchell, Jr.] that she objected to the skirts requirement. Mitchell responded to Peltier in support of the policy, stating:
'The Trustees, parents, and other community supporters were determined to preserve chivalry and respect among young women and men in this school of choice. For example, young men were to hold the door open for the young ladies and to carry an umbrella, should it be needed. Ma’am and sir were to be the preferred forms of address. There was felt to be a need to restore, and then preserve, traditional regard for peers.'
Mitchell later elaborated that chivalry is 'a code of conduct where women are treated, they’re regarded as a fragile vessel that men are supposed to take care of and honor.' Mitchell further explained that, in implementing the skirts requirement, CDS sought to 'treat[] [girls] courteously and more gently than boys.'"
Wrote the Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, in Peltier v. Charter Day School. That case is discussed in The Washington Post in "A school made girls wear skirts. A court ruled it unconstitutional."
This was an en banc decision, and there are 3 judges dissenting and 3 judges dissenting in part.
Let's just take a look at the dissenting opinion, by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, which begins at page 84:
The majority misses the whole purpose of the development of charter schools.... It is essentially dismissive of what charter schools might have to contribute, prejudging them as miscreants that must be brought to heel....
The very idea of a different model of schooling has drawn the ire of the public education establishment. As this case shows, any challenge to prevailing educational convention is met by circling the wagons....
Student dress codes in particular are unsettling to those who believe, as plaintiffs do here, that they connote feminine inferiority. See Majority Op. at 28. The codes are founded upon ideals of “chivalry,” a word which to the majority suggests male condescension toward women and the need of women for male protection, which in turn robs women of their dignity and independence. Id. at 28–29.
As Justice Brennan said some years ago, such “romantic paternalism” can “put women, not on a pedestal, but in a cage.” Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677, 684 (1973) (plurality).... I understand and respect this view. But the view is not universal. And the “cage” is one of imprisonment in our own perspective, a reluctance to recognize that across the great span of America, there are views that differ from the judge’s own.
To a great many people, dress codes represent an ideal of chivalry that is not patronizing to women, but appreciative and respectful of them. Far from being a pejorative term, chivalry is symbolic of the tone that CDS wishes to set. “Chivalry” harkens to the age of knighthood, defined as “[t]he brave, honourable, and courteous character attributed to the ideal knight.” Chivalry, Oxford English Dictionary (2d ed. 1989). What the knights bestowed upon their ladies fair at the end of a tournament has become the bouquet of roses extended on stage at the close of an opera.
The majority seeks to portray the age of chivalry as a brutal time. See Majority Op. at 28. But that is hardly the point. CDS uses chivalry in an aspirational sense, not to recreate an earlier time in all of its particulars, but to capture the contemporary connotations of a chivalric order as one in which women are due from the very inception of schooling the greatest measure of respect.
Whether a more chivalric order would in some way enhance mutual respect between the sexes, I hardly know. But one need only look to sexual assaults of women on campus, sexual harassment and belittlement of women in the workplace, sexual degradation of women on the internet, sexual trafficking of young women here and abroad, and spousal abuse of women in the home to know that all is not well.
Views legitimately differ on the remedies for this condition. But CDS’s chivalric approach should neither be legally banished from the educational system, nor should it be legally imposed. For CDS, the dress code is an adjunct to an altogether lawful and legitimate view of education that relies upon a “classical curriculum espousing traditional western civilization values.” J.A. 80.....
The advent of new possibilities need not extinguish more traditional gender roles which lend stability to home and family and ultimately to society itself. Indeed, many women embrace and balance both modern and traditional elements in their lives, to the benefit of the worlds of both work and family life....
So what if certain charter schools or private schools reside at the more traditional side of the spectrum? I’m okay; you’re okay. There is room for all in an educational system worth its salt.
The crucial question is one of student and parental choice. North Carolina has designed a system that allows parents and students to choose among varied options, and charter schools seek to preserve precisely that choice While some of these options espouse value systems with which the majority may disagree, that is no reason for it to stretch the Fourteenth Amendment to stamp out the right of others to hold different values and to make different choices....
It is said that dress codes are themselves coercive and antithetical to student choice. That misses the point. Preserving variety is the very reason to have a menu. You need not eat, or even like, everything on offer, and others’ tastes may well differ from your own. Castigating the chef for including salmon as an option (or a fellow customer for ordering it) makes little sense when you can order steak for yourself. So too here. No one is forced to go to a charter school, and certainly not to CDS....
But it is there for those who want it, and their choice is due respect. The majority fails to offer even that much. Does it not see the irony of mandating uniformity by striking down CDS’s uniform mandate? That is a shame....
ADDED: Now, that's a kick-ass dissent. You may wonder what The Washington Post said about it. Answer? Not a damned thing. It doesn't even mention that there is a dissent.
AND: I went to public school and graduated from high school in 1969. The entire time, I was required to wear a skirt. Looking back, I regard this as grossly unfair. Imagine recess with swings, slides, and jungle gyms and boys making a game of pulling up your skirt and gleeful exclamations about seeing underpants.
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66 comments:
Cert granted.
Girls like horses so they should like chivalry.
Erik Satie, En habit de cheval Composed as a school exercise, as I recall. Teacher wrote "Very good."
Sooner or later, Stein's Law will be doing its work.
Let men withdraw their protection and let women exercise their dignity and independence for, oh, a generation or so more. I predict a time of acute indignity and dependence until the default arrangements are restored. Meanwhile, we'll be monitoring sea levels to look for the apocalypse.
It won't be pretty, and I'm glad I probably won't have to see it. Many will publish works celebrating it while it happens, though. There's a word for those folks.
"Cert granted."
I didn't quote it but Wilkinson has a section in the end that's specifically about Justice Thomas.
Judge Wilkinson says it all.
I agree completely with this opinion.
It's gotten so even the existence of an idea or concept that goes against the narrative is not to be allowed. We'll use the courts to get rid of it, if possible. And in this case, it was.
I wonder which definition of feminism and women's rights was used in deciding to go after this school's dress code. Whoever did this must be now looking around the horizon and licking their chops at other institutions or businesses they can coerce or shut down.
I also wonder what would happen if the parents and kids at that school decided, among themselves, to honor the old dress code, regardless of the court's decision. In other words, if their choice was to continue to wear what the school had set out as the standard.
Anyway, I was always taught, from my childhood on, to open the door for women, or aged people of either sex. To carry an umbrella for a woman. To treat women with respect- always. Those days are gone. Knowing prevailing attitudes among people these days, I no longer open doors for women. No longer feel that, as a man, I should honor women other than my wife, sisters. The rest of you are on your own, as you have chosen. Or...as the group has chosen for you. Enjoy!
Wilkinson seems like an unusually sensible judge. Is that why he never got a SCOTUS nomination?
When the opinion gratuitously drops this as an early footnote, you know it isn't going to be rational:
Because the plaintiffs challenge the skirts requirement only as discriminatory
toward cisgender girls, we do not address the effects of the policy on any other students.
What are the odds that the mother/plaintiff opted to send her daughter to the school for the express purpose of bringing this suit? Stepping on her kindergarten daughter's back to strive for FEMINISM! is not a good look.
@ann,
Would you consider a "kick-ass dissent" tag? Or is the existence of such robust defense of "the other side" of such issues so rare that this example may be the ONLY example?
that is no reason for it to stretch the Fourteenth Amendment to stamp out the right of others to hold different values and to make different choices....
The game has been named.
It's not enough the left has destroyed the public educational system in this country. Now they have set their sights on the alternatives - charter schools, cyber schools, private Christian schools and home schooling. Commies-Pinkos hate competition. Nothing but total submission will satisfy these ravenous wolves.
At the risk of piling on, I agree completely. If the woman doesn't like the school rules, she should send her daughter elsewhere.
I would not have a problem with girls being allowed to wear pants at the school. But only in if the school, not the govt, decided to allow it.
All public school students in Puerto Rico wear uniforms. In my wife's high school, it is burgundy pants (mostly jeans, it appears), white shirt with collar, long or short sleeve, polo or button-up and black shoes closed toe shoes. Girls may wear a burgundy skirt. I don't think shorts are allowed for anyone. Middle school here is black pants and a yellow shirt.
I like the idea since where I went to high school, Falls Church VA, there was a lot of drama and competition over clothes. The poor kid here dresses the same as a rich kid.
My kids went to Catholic school. IIRC, boys were black pants white shirt, girls were a dark green skirt, white blouse and dark green vest in HS, jumper skirt with while blouse up to HS.
They would have "Color days" about monthly. Kids could wear regular clothes, with limits, and pay a "fine" of a dollar that went into a fund for the library IIRC. I kept complaining to my daughter that I already paid enough for the school, she should just wear her uniform and save me the dollar. "Papi...!"
Anyway, I am in favor of school uniforms. I am even more in favor of the school being able to decide whether to require uniforms or just a more general dress code like this school. If the parents don't like it, complain to the school, not the courts. If they really don't like it, send their kid somewhere else.
John LGBTQ Henry
The sad thing is parents don't teach their children manners.
"Does it not see the irony of mandating uniformity by striking down CDS’s uniform mandate? That is a shame...."
Progs don't do irony and they don't do shame. Mandating uniformity is their shtick. They like it. They like it when they have the power to do it. They like it especially when they can lord it over "conservatives." Here, the twofer opportunity was irresistible: attack conservative norms, and attack the point of charter schools while you're at it.
"You may wonder what The Washington Post said about it. Answer? Not a damned thing. It doesn't even mention that there is a dissent."
Why would they? Progs won, 'nuf said. If you shine too much light on things, democracy might not die as quickly as progs like. Darkness is MSM MO.
The crucial question is one of student and parental choice. North Carolina has designed a system that allows parents and students to choose among varied options, and charter schools seek to preserve precisely that choice While some of these options espouse value systems with which the majority may disagree, that is no reason for it to stretch the Fourteenth Amendment to stamp out the right of others to hold different values and to make different choices...
I agree. Not only will this appeal to the "conservatives," but I can see Justices Kagan and Brown Jackson concurring. In fact, I can see Justice Kagan writing the majority opinion.
Uniform requirements are meant to teach obedience to arbitrary, and often idiotic, authority.
Nothing more, nothing less.
If you want to teach respect for each other, then teach that! Don't try to implement it by creating another layer of requirements for behavior that obscure rather than clarify what you're trying to teach!
My qualification to state the above: 8 years of parochial elementary school, with uniform requirements enforced by nuns. Black shoes, blue or black pants, white shirt, blue tie for the males, and a plaid uniform dress with white shirt for the girls.
School Uniforms? Oh the horror!
What if charter schools require girls to wear full-body garments that only expose the eyes? You okay with that too?
Chivalry discussion reminds me that I started college in mid seventies at a place that like many had recently gone co-ed, and coming from a private school that had not. On the first day, another guy and I headed to the dean's office to register. 2 frosh women arrived at the door with us. We held the door open for them. One's reaction was to roll her eyes and say, "Puleez". I still hold open doors.
The issue is not school uniforms but requiring girls to dress differently from boys. What happens with restrictions on who many wear a skirt?
So I guess the effect of this decision is that no public school can have a different dress code for girls than they have for boys. Can they have different restrooms and locker rooms? Does Equal Protection require that no boy-girl-"other" distinctions can be made by any governmental authority?
Its absolutely insane that Federal judges are deciding what the dress code is in a NC school. That's the crazy system Americans want. Its not what the founding fathers ever envisioned.
"Public schools are meant to teach obedience to arbitrary, and often idiotic, authority. Nothing more, nothing less."
Fixed it for you.
"Castigating the chef for including salmon as an option (or a fellow customer for ordering it) makes little sense when you can order steak for yourself.'
In the judge's analogy, swapping the salmon and steak wouldn't have worked. "Castigating the chef for including steak as an option..." is a little too on-the-nose.
"Diversity is our strength!"
Great. Let's do a traditional values charter school.
"Fascist! The charter schools must be run exactly like the public schools."
So, diversity is not our strength?
"Racist!"
This conversation could be evergreen (with only a few word changes) for almost every topic to be discussed with the modern hard-core Left.
Spiros said...
"What if charter schools require girls to wear full-body garments that only expose the eyes?"
That would most likely be a Muslim-founded or Muslim-oriented school. There would not be a single lawsuit brought against such a school, and Our Betters wouldn't dream of interfering with their dress code.
ConradBibby: "So I guess the effect of this decision is that no public school can have a different dress code for girls than they have for boys. Can they have different restrooms and locker rooms? Does Equal Protection require that no boy-girl-"other" distinctions can be made by any governmental authority?"
That's exactly where this is headed. The decision is purely ideological and the dissent is correct. Forty years ago some people were complaining that America was going to hell in a handbasket and becoming as decadent as Rome before the fall. At the time I thought they were nuts, now I see that they were prescient.
In the famous "Bong Hits for Jesus" case, Clarence Thomas argued that school boards and school officials need to run the schools. They had both the expertise and experience and they dealt with the consequences of their decisions. If they abused their authority, local elections were the remedy.
Thomas maintained that requiring a school principal refer to volumes of Federal court proceedings before dealing with a kid openly advocating illegal drug use at a public event was just crazy. (not his word)
Thomas quoted Justice Black who also had opinions on the Federal Courts involving themselves in day to day running of the schools.
“Once a society that generally respected the authority of teachers, deferred to their judgment, and trusted them to act in the best interest of school children, we now accept defiance, disrespect, and disorder as daily occurrences in many of our public schools.”
That was in 2007. Everything that has happened since proved Justice Thomas and Justice Black to be 100% right.
So the skirt mandate is unconstitutional, but what if the school continues to advocate chivalry as a good thing and promotes the assumptions behind it (i.e., female fragility)? The aspect of this that involves the propriety of what schools are teaching the students seems more consequential than whether or not the girls have to wear a skirt.
That's a pretty damning dissent, pointing out how the majority is undermining the charter schools system and hamstringing parents by legislating from the bench without understanding what it is ruling over.
That said, I found the description of chivalry incomplete in an important way. As the Instapundit has pointed out, chivalry isn't just about the behavior of men, it is a system that makes demands of both sexes in requiring that they relate to each other in a respectful and decent manner. If you are going to pull part and criticize only parts of that system, at least take the time to understand what you're doing.
Bill "School Uniforms Initiative" Clinton could not be reached for comment.
School uniforms were a strange thing for Clinton to make a big deal out of. It was part of Dick Morris's "triangulation" strategy, a feint to the right to shore up Clinton's sagging popularity. Looking back it seems like it was also Bill's way of saying that he had gotten anything done. But what happened to school uniforms in public schools since then? The idea has just languished and expired?
J. Harvie Wilkinson III
Remember when guys used to do that? J. Edgar Hoover. J. Parnell Thomas. F. Scott Fitzgerald, F. Lee Bailey. T. Coraghessan Boyle. Why not just drop the first name altogether?
All the years I wore skirt uniforms, I never thought to bitch. We wore shorts underneath if we wanted to play on the monkey bars. Leggings to stay warm and we’re allowed grey pants in the winter. We’d think to make someone aware if they were accidentally showing their vulnerable areas. I never noticed anything inappropriate- I think we were instinctively careful.
Being dressed all alike, our distinction became our faces. Our voices. Our personalities.
Not what we wore. Not really our hair. Not anything superficial.
Now- the seeming ambition is to emphasize all those tangible working parts to express interior being.
It’s becoming quite obnoxious.
And it’s not working.
Charter school = totally voluntary.
Bill "School Uniforms Initiative" Clinton could not be reached for comment.
School uniforms were a strange thing for Clinton to make a big deal out of. It was part of Dick Morris's "triangulation" strategy, a feint to the right to shore up Clinton's sagging popularity. Looking back it seems like it was also Bill's way of saying that he had gotten anything done. But what happened to school uniforms in public schools since then? The idea has just languished and expired?
J. Harvie Wilkinson III
Remember when guys used to do that? J. Edgar Hoover. J. Parnell Thomas. F. Scott Fitzgerald, F. Lee Bailey. T. Coraghessan Boyle. Why not just drop the first name altogether?
mikee said...Uniform requirements are meant to teach obedience to arbitrary, and often idiotic, authority. Nothing more, nothing less.
If you believe that, then you should sit out this discussion. You don't know enough to make
a useful contribution. (Among the many benefits, uniforms spare poorer students the embarrassment of not being able to keep up with fashion and it limits gang activity.)
John Henry brings up an interesting point. What if this policy had been defended on the grounds that by forcing everybody to wear the same things, it eliminated the ability of rich kids to be "better dressed" and thus struck a blow for equality and social justice? Similarly with having to open doors for everyone, not just the people you like. Would the majority have been fine with that?
I wonder if Elementary School boys still put dental mirrors in their shoelaces to look up little girls skirts?
Temujin- that’s a shame, I’d say.
Men usually always hold the door for me. I’m always appreciative.
But then, that’s how I was raised.
What the hell kind of perverted school did you go to, anyway?
Good Lord, Howard.
What's perverted about little boys being curious about little girls? My favorite part of going to Vermont in summer are the farm girls working the rural veggie stands wearing threadbare sun dresses and tight jeans with a halter top. This was considered normal and appropriate red blooded American male behavior back in the day.
I also graduated high school in 1969. I well remember the revolt against the rule that “girls must wear dresses or skirts.” A few of the more radical girls started by wearing shorts or pants under their skirts. They didn’t demonstrate or circulate petitions, they just undermined the dress code. This was in, I think, the spring of 1968. Within a year, the dress code was out and girls could wear pants. Of course, this was at Newton South High School, in one of the most liberal, affluent suburbs in the US, where almost everyone, students, parents and teachers included, was anti-establishment because of the Vietnam War.
Of course, Judge Wilkinson’s dissent was right as a matter of law and common sense, and with any luck the Court will grant cert and reverse.
The Man is so nosy. Butt out.
My brother's non-charter public high school required uniforms, but I think the policy was related to gangs. Khakis and white polo shirt. No showing your colors.
"what if the school continues to advocate chivalry as a good thing and promotes the assumptions behind it (i.e., female fragility)"?
You can call it fragility or delicacy, but females on the whole probably have more of both than males on the whole. And while I'm not harkening back to some non-existent perfect past, a system premised on the notion that females should be accorded special respect does not strike me as inherently awful. As the dissent and others here have pointed out, it might well beat the contemporary alternative.
In all events, it's a little peculiar to think that the Constitution forbids it, particularly for a school that students and their families are free to choose or reject.
Spiros mentioned the burka. How silly. If the school wanted to wear a burka and you wanted your kiddo to go to THAT school why in the world would YOU care that they did? What business is it if yours?
Good grief.
"Uniform requirements are meant to teach obedience to arbitrary, and often idiotic, authority.
Nothing more, nothing less."
The authority of the school leadership and teachers is not arbitrary*, it is designed and often earned. It is agreed to by the parents who voluntarily send their kids to that school.
*Although it is often idiotic.
My authority: 12 years of Catholic school, including one where I successfully led a student council effort to make a change to the dress code for girls, agreed to by the school board.
That change? They were allowed to wear pants. I never understood why all the other guys were against it. But then I was a Democrat back then.....
Key passage in dissent:
to expand state action doctrine so that charter school choice is dramatically restricted would create a tension within the Fourteenth Amendment as it relates to education. On the one hand, the Amendment’s due process guarantee has been interpreted to provide a right of parental choice. Pierce, 268 U.S. at 534. But on the other hand, the majority would interpret that same Amendment’s state action prong in such an expansive way as to limit the educational choices a state can make available. Courts cannot allow the Fourteenth Amendment to become a self-contradiction by reading it to “constrain a State’s neutral efforts to provide greater educational opportunity” and school choices.
"...promotes the assumptions behind it (i.e., female fragility)"
By numerous measures women are definitely more fragile than men. They are more affected by mental health issues, consume more health care per capita, require more attention and resources per capita in schooling, etc. The biggest advancements in medicine after the discovery of the germ theory of disease were in reducing maternal and infant mortality and increase in average female lifespan in Europe and European-settled countries. The main beneficiaries of most health care innovations since the 1940s have been women, including an emphasis on pregnancy prevention or termination and in the addressing of cancers and other diseases that affect more women than men.
If women were not the more fragile form of human, all of this investment in keeping them alive and healthy would not have been necessary.
"You can call it fragility or delicacy, but females on the whole probably have more of both than males on the whole."
I used "fragility" because that was the term used in the court case in explaining chivalry. My point is that the case focuses on whether or not girls must wear skirts, but the underlying philosophy being promoted by this policy is chivalry or, more broadly, traditional Western values and culture. What if the school doesn't mandate skirts, but DOES affirmatively promote the underlying cultural values that say that men's role in society is "x," and women's is "y"? Would a court deign to say "you can't teach public school students that philosophy"? I guess this is a question about the reach of Title IX: does it apply to prevent a school from merely TEACHING a sex-discriminatory view of society (assuming this is taught to ALL students, male and female), or is it limited to specific, concrete ways a school might treat girl students differently from boy students?
What I find most amusing is the dependence up on the Hollywood depiction of chivalry (and that becoming the definition). Behavior by 'Ivanhoe'. When in reality, chivalry was only extended to those females of the elite class. Who by the way were protected from offense by their own family of brutish, ignorant men of power who practiced violence and often simply killed any of lower status who displeased them. The knights disdained education and the educated. They kept "nerds" around to handle the paperwork but held them in low regard. And a lower status woman, without a father, guardian or brothers who were also knights and thus of status to challenge any offense against her without summary murder, was a high risk of rape and abuse.
But we understand, in the modern Hollywood image, every girl is a princess protected by unseen men. Of course, historically, princesses were bartered off for marriages of alliance. Imagine your uncle the first king of England, packing you and your sister off to, now I can't remember, Flanders I think, so the middle aged duke can select between you to be his wife and the sister pack back across the channel until the next time your uncle needs a womb to place so that your children will have familiar ties to England.
Chivalry is a very poor argument here. Fortunately for the school, the plaintiffs have done no more research than the school governors on the topic.
tommyesq said...
What are the odds that the mother/plaintiff opted to send her daughter to the school for the express purpose of bringing this suit? Stepping on her kindergarten daughter's back to strive for FEMINISM! is not a good look.
I wondered if she was a public school union teacher.
"You can call it fragility or delicacy, but females on the whole probably have more of both than males on the whole."
"Lia" Thomas could not be reached for comment.
As for skirts, my daughters all wore shorts under their skirts to school. Maybe Howard explained why he is so weird.
Look at the list of outfits that prepared amicus briefs supporting Peltier. I count 68, plus the DOJ, as opposed to 3 for the school.
That represents a staggering amount of money spent to stomp on this small K-8 charter school over what seems to be a minor transgression at worst.
The people who work at these often tax free organizations are extremely well paid and they are multitudes. They are the tip of the left's spear, not Antifa. Check the Form 990 when one of them pops up in the news. It's easy to believe that the paychecks motivate them as much as ideology, if not more.
And the money that supports them is difficult if not impossible to trace. It's not just Soros.
"[Dress codes] eliminated the ability of rich kids to be 'better dressed' and thus struck a blow for equality..."
This is the main reason for dress codes in many schools. It is enforced conformity with benefits that far outweigh any disadvantages.
I am going to just agree with the ruling in this case, but I am not fooled by the majority- had the school simply mandated the exact same uniform for both genders (easily done), the majority would still have ruled against the school because we all know the real target of this suit was requirement of uniforms itself, and the charter system too, not the difference between the requirements between the two genders, which will be addressed in the next lawsuit filed by the plaintiff's financial supporters.
Farmgirl, I'll still hold a door open for you.
Farmgirl
My daughter always wore gym or lycta shorts under her uniform. So did my granddaughter who just graduated.
I have the impression with no specific knowledge that this is standard practice.
Re opening doors for women, it only takes getting scolded a couple of times "I can open my own door" to sour a man on the practice.
John LGBTQ Henry
Follow the science. J-PAL at MIT is one place where real sociological science occurs and they studied uniforms in Kenya and elsewhere and found significant improvement in attendance and educational results compare to other programs. Also, school uniforms seem to reduce teen pregnancies and decrease dropouts. Also, studies seem to indicate different genders seem to learn better with different techniques in some cases.
Uniforms also reduce the expense of "school clothes" for parents as well as the drama about what to wear.
Back in the 80s a number of companies here offered free uniforms for managers and supervisors. Most hourly folks outside the offices already had them.
Dark or khaki slacks and a guayabera shirt along with safety shoes. Not high fashion but free.
I really liked not having to pay for my clothes other than socks and underwear. Also didn't have to wash or fix buttons and tears. The uniform service did that
My wife and her colleagues all wear khaki shirts with the school logo and name embroidered. She likes them because they are inexpensive and she doesn't have to worry about work clothing.
I generally wear a blue dress shirt and khaki pants when in a client plant. From Costco so inexpensive, wear like iron and look nice.
In the office gym shorts and t shirt. If I decide to dress up.
John LGBTQ Henry
Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't charter schools an option, rather than a requirement? If someone disagrees with what the charter schools are doing in requiring dress codes and proper behavior, etc., they are not required to send their children there; they can just send their children to the regular public schools where the standards are more lax.
Two sexes: male and female Two sex-correlated genders: masculine and feminine, respectively. Social standards are set to normalize a favorable juxtaposition of the sexes.
Uniforms also serve an identity/solidarity role - allowing individuals to be representative of a group, and a group to provide identity to the individual. In some cases it even leads to a form of esprit du corps where group identity adds to the self-regard and esteem of a participant individual.
What does an "authoritarian" look like?
They're the ones who don't want to let anyone be different.
It's a Charter school. you dont' ike their dress code? Don't go there!
"Oh, but I k=like the rest of it." News flash: life doesn't come a la carte. It's quite probable that the things that drive the dress code are the same things that make the rest of the good.
But for the fascists of the Left, diversity is the one thing that absolutely, positively, can NOT be allowed
I'd be more impressed with the dissent if it just stated "this isn't a federal matter"
“Wilkinson seems like an unusually sensible judge. Is that why he never got a SCOTUS nomination?”
He would not be considered because he only went to UVA law school.
I keep coming back to this: "As Justice Brennan said some years ago, such “romantic paternalism” can “put women, not on a pedestal, but in a cage.” Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677, 684 (1973) (plurality)"
I'm thinking of Justice Harlan's "...one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric” and “because government officials cannot make principled distinctions in this area that the Constitution leaves matters of taste and style so largely to the individual.” Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971)"
It seems to me that if the First Amendment is broad enough to allow the wearing of clothing with "Fuck the draft" on it, it should also allow parents to choose to wear dresses at school. If you don't like the first, you can turn away. If you don't like the second, choose another school. No one is forcing you to choose a school that has a dress code.
If you think the dress code is a cage, don't choose it. But don't force others, who thinks it elevates behavior to comply with your vulgarity.
[Yes, I am crossing the streams and mixing the metaphors.]
The Constitution leaves matters of taste, style and education to the individual. See, among others, Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923); Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925); Wisconsin v. Jonas Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972)
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