From the article: "Some themes are simple enough (wear blue for autism awareness, wear pink to stand against bullying), but others ('Book Character Day,' 'Favorite Animal Day,' 'Adam Sandler Day') are far more likely to involve advanced crafting skills or a panicked 9 p.m. Target run. 'Some of it is just wildly specific: ‘Wear a Dr. Seuss hat.’ Who has that just lying around? "Crazy Sock Day." Socks are expensive!; says... a single mother.... 'I think I spend a good $200 on spirit days every year.'"
May 29, 2024
"Sounds like schools assume all families have a lot of spare cash."
Says one commenter, at "Why is it always spirit week? Schools keep adding theme days, and parents can’t keep up" (WaPo).
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46 comments:
And yet kids are getting dumber if its not the lockdowns its the garbage that makes them incapable or reasoning speaking or reading properly
I come from broward county where the classss are being emptied out because theres an alternative
Sounds like the schools are avoiding the difficult work of...spending time on task and actually teaching.
MadLibs for fun: Swap "school" for "government" and "spirit week" for "paid holiday."
Bread and circuses. When everyone hates you, buy some love with special interest bribes. But but but, don't look at the schools test scores or the government budget deficit.
Why is it always Spirit Week?
Students: “Eat it! …Eat it raw!”
Principal Poop: “Rah, rah, rah! That’s the spirits we have here at More Science [High School]!
“Awareness days” are grooming for future Advocates.
This is the cause. This is how you must participate.
If you don’t participate it’s because you are evil.
In later-stage adults this is known as the United Way campaign.
It is a kind of thinking that has unfortunately infected most institutions. Nudge culture gone crazy. No thought to the cumulative burdens we place on human existence, only the constant drive to add to the resume the words organizer, creator, leader, influencer.
I want to influence these people right in the nose…
In early elementary school we didn’t have theme day but we did have recess in the snow on occasion. My feet were growing so quickly my mother was adamant she would make it to spring without buying me new boots so off to school I went in my sneakers. I was scolded and denied recess by Miss Vosburgh, a 70s hottie with a Machiavellian disposition…
Once a school has a Special Day for Cause A, then they have to add Special Days for Causes B,C, etc.
I ignore these initiatives at work, and they can ignore them at school.
Just keeps useless admins occupied.
Dr. Seuss hat day? Where would you even get one?
And here I was complaining about orange shirt day. (Because, once upon a time, a little indigenous girl wanted to wear an orange shirt to her residential school but couldn't because the school had a uniform. So now, 100 years later, kids have to wear an orange shirt in honor of the event.)
Don't forget that for most of these "special" days require parent "volunteers" to help run the activities. We wouldn't want to add to the teacher's/administrator's workload while they neglect their core duties like teaching.
Heaven forbid ths chinese and thd indians are having a chortle
When I went to high school, we were thrilled when we got a “jeans” day. Those were during the dress code days.
I have no doubt that teaching well is hard work. So, like most people with a hard job, teachers and administrators seek to avoid doing it as much as possible while still getting paid. And if they can do that in a group activity, safety in numbers. Human nature.
"I ignore these initiatives at work...."
The only thing like that for me, at the law school, was Halloween. Some lawprofs would wear Halloween costumes. Not that there was real pressure, but I would never consider teaching a class while wearing a costume. I didn't even wear a law professor costume.
"... and they can ignore them at school."
Who's supposed to do the ignoring — the parent or the child? With a really young child, it's cruel to say I don't do that, you're on your own. But I'd try to make it the child's responsibility as early as possible. And I would talk to the child about why the school is doing this and whether it is good to play along? Is there any consequence to not participating? Is it genuinely fun for you? Does it oppress women? etc. etc. Critical thinking.
"I have no doubt that teaching well is hard work...."
I think it's clear from the comments over there that the teachers are not the ones coming up with this activity. They don't like it either. This is the work of administrators.
"When I went to high school, we were thrilled when we got a “jeans” day."
When I went to high school, the girls couldn't wear pants of any kind. It was always skirts and dresses (and we got in trouble if we followed fashion and hemmed them short). We wore nylons too.
Public Democrat run schools in action.
Were is the education?
What kids are learning very quickly - is how going out and buying more stuff... never ending stuff - is what leads to joy. Consumerism Class 101 for kids.
News flash - that big line at TJ Maxx/Home Goods/Target is a sign of our decline.
Administrators.
The democrat party apparatchiks
Consumerism Class 101 for kids.
70 percent of the US economy is the consumer…
Peer pressure to conform and participate can be dreadful to young students. I know.
tired of spirit days?
Just try wearing a poppy on Nov 11th, or an American Flag shirt in summer school on July 4th..
You'll be told to take them off.. Because they are "decisive"
White people "problems" are sadly hilarious because they are so objectively trivial. When reality finally hits suburban White Americans, as I believe it will soon, there are going to be tears and blood everywhere. But kind of funny too.
I've noticed this trend among my younger colleagues. You've always had a bit of something like this in HS (wear school colors the day before the Homecoming game, etc.), especially in all-girls or co-ed schools, but now it has spread like a virus to elementary and middle school. Entire weeks - the week before Christmas break, for example - are given over to pajama day, Disney character day, favorite book character day, etc. I am so glad this missed our family; it would have driven me and my boys nuts. We really didn't do crafts well.
Never saw it in all-boys Catholic school, though. There, "spirit week" dress meant you could wear a school-related t-shirt (you already owned a dozen of them), khaki shorts and sneakers. The boys loved that idea.
We have theme months and days at work now, but thankfully no dress up requirements (yet). I ignore them; I have my own religious calendar (and dress if I really wanted one, I guess - at least I could always cover my hair with a scarf at Divine Liturgy, if I felt particularly pious). Are the two ideas related somehow?
It's as if teachers have run out of things to teach. Which is funny because our kids cannot read, write, add, or think for themselves. Perhaps more focus on the basics and less on the celebrations of things?
"Blogger Ann Althouse said...
"When I went to high school, we were thrilled when we got a “jeans” day."
When I went to high school, the girls couldn't wear pants of any kind. It was always skirts and dresses (and we got in trouble if we followed fashion and hemmed them short). We wore nylons too."
Things changed quick back then. After I left Catholic grade school (grades 1-8) with uniforms in 1971 all we wore to high school, including the girls, were jeans. When one of the cuter girls wore a dress to school about my junior year it was such a change from the jeans it just grabbed my attention. There was nothing special about the dress but she he did look good in it and did stand out.
I checked Amazon. A decent red and white top hat from “The Cat in the Hat” cost $20, give or take. If you know about “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins” you can get Bartholomew Cubbins’s hat for half that (it looks like a Robin Hood hat but in red instead of green).
Still, not every family has a spare $10 lying around. School administrators are obviously paid too well or they’s know that.
But if you do decide to get a “Dr. Suess hat,” be sure to use the Althouse Amazon portal.
"Does it oppress women? etc. etc"
There are lots of reasons to support something besides the fact that it oppresses women. (sarc.) Which begs the question: how can suggesting the voluntary wearing a specified article of clothing oppress anyone? Doesn't oppression require some specific injustice be actively perpetrated against at least one individual, e.g., making up a felony in order to try a presidential candidate in a state venue after the federal authorities, including the Justice Department and the FEC have determined it inappropriate to try in the governing federal venue?
Schools have made a series of poor assumptions over the last 40 years to disastrous effect. This wouldn't even rate among the Top 100 bad assumptions made.
AA: When I went to high school, the girls couldn't wear pants of any kind. It was always skirts and dresses (and we got in trouble if we followed fashion and hemmed them short). We wore nylons too.
Yep. If the boys (on any day) did not have a shirt with a collar, shirttail tucked in, pants with a belt, and shoes and socks up to snuff, you got sent home and given a zero for the days work. Sideburns and hair were measured by the dean with a ruler, subject to the same penalty. That's how the boys in Lynyrd Skynyrd formed their "relationship" with Coach Leonard Skinner. He was "Offisa Pupp" sending them home for that long hair. They would go practice in a garage - for them it was a win win.
Once a year, we got to wear jeans to school. "Jeans Day" was a big deal, and everybody made pictures of themselves at school. In JEANS! How transgressive can one be, after all?
Compulsory Fun is loathsome even when it doesn't cost anything.
When I was a child I would have been revolted by spirit days. The occasional display of patriotism was enough. I would have opted out of participation, and so would my parents. They wanted us and our classmates to be individuals and to get to know ourselves.
Member of the class of 1983 of an inner city high school here. We would have looked side-eyed at any attempt at a "spirit week" type of initiative - beyond the usual things related to Homecoming and Prom.
If they did decide to try "spirit week", the future alcoholics would have been briefly excited, though.
These "spirit" or theme days train young children -- and to some degree, their parent(s) -- to blindly follow the crowd without thought and introspection.
Start innocuously, with benign themes, and then you can gradually introduce "Trans Day of Visibility," "Drag Queen Day" and "Get Out The Vote" days into your local elementary school.
Before you know it, you'll have the little lemmings celebrating Adam Sandler movies.
My daughter likes the pajama days and might wear a particular color on a designated day. My son ignores all dress-up. Our family has always disregarded anything complicated, like book character day. I have bought T-shirts and sweatshirts with school name on them, but I can't taking spending money just for a dress-up day at school.
I did dress up as Tintin when my wife and I went to see the movie (now you know what I look like), but I wore clothes that I already owned. My wife was appalled - I had to spring it on her as a fait accompli when it was time to leave - but people in line took selfies with me.
When my school held pajama day, it didn't go well.
I sleep in the nude.
In the public schools, every day is Act Like a Moron Day.
To hide that they aren't able or willing to teach the kids. It's Kindergarten all the way through now.
Don't let the public schools, their administrators, or their teachers coerce you into spending for anything beyond your property taxes. That's all the financial support you owe them. Be the adult in the room and tell them no. Demonstrate to your kids how to stand up to peer pressure at the adult level.
When they start doing their real job of properly educating your children, then we can talk about wasting time on frivolous "feel good" nonsense like "spirit days."
Here's Garry Marshall talking about how "pressure groups" for worthy causes got him to inject messages into his shows in the 1970s:
https://youtu.be/XPnrUmxql7Y?si=ryYjOuqaafnR7NxU
He doesn't seems to realize that his shows just stopped being funny.
You know I just tell my kids they have to make their own thing without me spending money. Magic.
It’s not just cash. Schools are fabricating all kinds of new celebrations and graduations that demand parental time in an era when both parents usually work. It’s nuts.
For those of us who recall "The 500 Hats of Bartholemew Cubbins" wearing a Dr. Seuss hat is incredibly easy, as any available hat will do. Prove me wrong.
Also, teaching your kid to never work for free, unless the work is voluntarily decided upon as a gift to the recipient, is important. Otherwise their future managers will have them at work on Fridays until 8pm every week, without overtime pay.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Home school your kids.
The democrats are trying to turn them into communists and fuck them.
Twofer...
Is it really the administrators' idea? I get the sense that it's the bored moms of the PTA who come up with these ideas and are full of spirit.
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