[BigV]

Originally Posted by Clodbobble

In my high school, a similar rule was created my junior year: socks and shoelaces must be black or white, or brown only if they matched the shoes. End of story. A bunch of the suburban white kids protested by wearing rainbow shoelaces. Boo hoo hoo, their creative expression was being unnecessarily stifled. The rule wasn't for them. The rule was because there had been actual gang fights with actual weapons because students were showing their gang colors in their shoelaces.

Yes, my point is that it's not about the shoelaces. Or the ballcap. Or the niqab. Or the "Fish Saves" shirt. It's about disagreements, differences, and **how best to handle such situations.** And while I will say that rules make an excellent starting place, they often make a lousy, unsatisfying, short-lived ending place. How solid and enduring was your buy-in for conflicts that ended with "Because I'm the Mom, that's why."? "Just because" sucks as a reason to stop work on solving a conflict. It can postpone it, but it really never solves it. And that's my main problem with the over-reliance on zero-tolerance policies, especially in schools. They don't work. They substitute for work, and poorly. Permit me to quote Happy Monkey, who expressed this very eloquently.

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

School administrators are not often good at nuance. They LOVE absolute rules (unless someone figures out a loophole, then they LOVE unwritten rules). The law may be that the school can't organize prayer groups, but a principal or school board will say "no prayer groups", possibly with the idea of discouraging any student activity not organized by the school - schools are frequently very paranoid about stuff like that. A law may say no weapons in schools, and the school will ban metal compasses and nail clippers. A law may say no drugs in school, and a kid will get expelled for taking an aspirin. There's no "new tolerance" conspiracy for that, they just love to be able to say, "sorry, I have no discretion, it's a zero-tolerance policy."

And very succinctly.

That's the problem with zero tolerance policies. No matter how stupid the decision, they can just shrug and say their hands were tied.

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Which is better, to deal with a disruption or defuse the situation before a disruption is ever allowed to happen? The school wouldn't bother to enforce rules without a good reason. Tigger and pink socks are not the reason, but they unfortunately fall into the same category as things which are, and the school cannot show favoritism.

I'll tell you what I think is better. I think it is far better to teach judgment, discernment, communication, and while we're at it here in school, how about academics? And I think the best method to teach these things is by example. Not the example of "That's the rule, case closed!"

Take the case of the veil. Or the girl with the two toned clothes and Tigger socks. Really. An impediment to instruction? Maybe. All by themselves? Maaayyyybe, but very very unlikely. Do you think you could learn History or Algebra or Spelling wearing those clothes? Let me put it this way, assuming your young child is wearing regular clothes, not wet or dirty or messed up, could you teach them something irrespective of their dress that day? I bet you could.

And if the teacher couldn't get the lesson across, even the lesson about gang colors, then another approach is called for. Rules like these should not be misused in place of improvisation. You're right it's not really about the socks, it's about something else and every minute we waste on the socks is a minute longer before we get to the real solution to the real problem.