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.
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