Trustee should shift focus from district dress code

Joe Robinson

I read, with some amusement, Newport-Mesa Unified School District

trustee Wendy Leece’s comments about enforcing the dress code in

school (“Dressing down the dress code,” Saturday), since on the same

day an article appeared in another newspaper about schools in Iran,

where the theocratic rulers have finally allowed girls to attend

school without veils covering their faces. The accompanying picture

showed these poor young women still heavily clothed from head to toe,

with only their faces and hands showing. The religious leaders have

decried this new “modern” style, which, they say, will lead to

“immorality” and “nudity.”

I have been teaching at Newport Harbor High School for 33 years. I

have never observed any connection between what students’ wear and

the learning process, although I have noticed that if students are

comfortable and feel good about themselves, they learn better. I

think the girls and boys at our school in general dress very

sensibly; in winter, they dress more warmly than in the hot months.

The clothes they wear are simply a reflection of the current styles,

the same styles worn by adults of our community. Statistics would

indicate that even though young women seem to be wearing “more

revealing” clothing than their parents did, there is no concurrent

increase in “immorality” or “nudity.”

Polls indicate that more and more high school students are

choosing abstinence, and I have observed far more interest in

religion and spirituality among the young people of today than I saw

30 years ago.

As for a teachers’ dress code, I’m not sure what the point of that

is. Some would say the kids would have more “respect” if we wore more

formal attire. I have found that the best way for me to get respect

from students is to respect them. Like all humans, they respect

people who don’t condescend or belittle them. They respect teachers

who are fair. They also respect teachers who are competent and really

know their subject matter and how to teach it.

Leece is on the school board, and she’s in a position to do things

that could really change education. She knows what they are. Help us

get rid of some of these silly state and district tests that don’t

really measure what we teach and take up huge amounts of valuable

class time. Help us achieve the one thing that could dramatically

change education: lower class size. The district has again cut our

staffing for the coming year, which means we have to eliminate some

valuable elective and Advanced Placement classes, and that we will

still face numerous classes with 40-plus students. Leece knows very

well that this makes it harder for us to reach individual students

and that more of them will fall through the cracks.

If she is worried about morality, think about the morality of

being one of the people responsible for crowding all those kids into

classrooms in which there are sometimes not enough chairs. Don’t get

sidetracked by issues that aren’t important. Help us. Work with us

teachers to really make this the best district in the country.

* JOE ROBINSON is a Newport Harbor High School teacher.