School heads get right to ban veils

Ban all religous dress at school.

Ban all religous dress at school? Love to see this here.

Seriously? Really?!

Like a law that says what can't be worn at public school? How in the world would you construct such a law? Are you saying the government has a compelling interest in deciding what people can wear based on their religious beliefs?

WTF?!?!

Would you consider a full-face niqab inappropriate because it was religious? What about a girl that wore a long skirt because pants or short skirts were considered immodest by her religion's standards? Sorry honey, above the knee only? And the kid who has the t-shirt with the fish-thing on it? What's wrong with the t-shirt? Or is it the "religious"-ness of the dress that you object to?

A crucifix or a star of david on a chain around the neck ok? Or no jewelery? What about my wedding band, put on my finger in a religious ceremony? Buh-bye?

As more and more charter schools collect more and more public money, how would you disentangle the parochial school's nun's habits and priest's collars from the fabric of the institution?

But back to my original question: Why would the government want to do this? And how in the world could you write such a law?

We have uniforms at our local schools. Kids would use crap like this just to get out of it. They can wear jewelry just not something overt, not Jesus t-shirts, hats, veils, stuff like that.
It is less expensive for parents and has helped with class conflicts within the school population.
You want your kid in a religous school, send them to one.

This isn't a ban on the niqab because it is a religious item of clothing (unlike France). This is a decision that supports a Head Teacher's right to enforce their own uniform code. The school in this case has a uniform policy and the niqab is not included in this.

It is a more contentious case than previous ones as the girl has two older sisters who attended the school and were alloed to wear the veil under a different Head. This Head however believes that the niqab is a barrier to effective communication and should not be worn in the classroom.

Which brings us inevitably to here:

Tigger socks land girl in detention, school in court

A California school district is being sued over its decision to punish a a seventh-grader for wearing socks with pictures of Tigger, a Winnie-the-Pooh character, on the first day of classes.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Toni Kay Scott showed up at Redwood Middle School in "a denim skirt, a brown shirt with a pink border, and long socks with pictures of Tigger."

This violated the school's dress code, which requires certain colors or fabrics and bans clothing with words, photos or symbols.

The Chronicle, quoting from the lawsuit, says the 14-year-old "was escorted to the principal's office by a uniformed police officer and, along with two of her schoolmates, was sent to an in-school suspension program called Students With Attitude Problems."

The ACLU says her younger sister, a sixth-grader named Sydni, was sent to the principal's office for wearing shirts emblazoned with pro-Christian and anti-drug messages.

“I agree; no midriffs, mini-skirts or cleavage," the girls' mother says in a statement from the local ACLU. "School is a place to learn. But anything above that should be my call as a parent. Pink socks and two-tones are not a crime. That’s just nitpicking.”

The school district, in a letter to parents, has defended the policy as a reasonable response to fights at the school. "They said they believed the policy had a hand in reducing confrontations among students and raising test scores," The Napa Valley Register reports.

Update at 10:19 a.m. ET: Sorry. We linked to the wrong "Redwood Middle School" in our original post. Here's part of the dress code at the Napa Valley school:

• All clothes will be plain (no pictures, patterns, stripes or logos of any size or kind) and must fit appropriately.
• COLORS – SOLID COLORS ONLY - Acceptable colors are blue, white, green, yellow, khaki, gray, brown and black for all apparel including jackets (students are encouraged to also not dress in the same color i.e. all black or all blue). School colors apply to all items of clothing or accessories including shoes, shoelaces, socks, belts, scarves, mufflers, hair ties, etc.
• FABRICS – No jeans, denim, denim-looking, sweat pants, sports-nylon or fleece material may be worn. All pants, shorts, skirts or dresses must be cotton twill, chino or corduroy.

This is the right result? This is the example we want to our children to learn from? Conformity good, Winnie the freakin Pooh evil? Come ON!

I would rather have my children learn critical thinking and judgement skills, not Garranimals tag matching.

There are already rules and procedures to deal with disruptions. Creating a new category of disruption called "religious dress" positively invites conflict, competing opinions about what constitutes "religious dress", and enmity among the members of the community of learning--none of which contributes to learning.

If you can't do your job at maintaining order in the classroom because someone's wearing some special clothes, you have a problem. But the problem isn't about the clothes, it's about the leadership in the class and in the school. Having another "law" to whack people with won't confer respect or establish order. Those come from the teachers, not from the legislators.

I agree that the school in the case above was incredibly heavy-handed in dealing with the student wearing Tigger socks.

However I totally support schools having the right to make restrictions on students' appearances and I don't think it prevents anyone thinking for themselves to conform to a dress code.

One of my Mum's (younger) friends was routinely escorted to the Head's office to have her beehive hairdo brushed out and her hair plaited into pigtails.

At my school there was occasional spot checks on make up (it was forbidden) and girls were sent to Matron's office where Matron stood over you with tissues and baby lotion until it was all removed.

We had regulation length skirts, and when I started school, girls used to fold them up at the waist to make them shorter - when I left the fashion was to let the hems out to make them longer.

We knew what the rules were and we knew we had to follow them. We bent them as much as possible, but when we were caught we accepted the measures taken to bring us back into line. The Debating Society had a motion every year re school uniform, and the Student Council often brought it up at staff meetings. We were encouraged to question the rules but follow them while they were still in place.

Students should be encouraged to use their minds to express themselves, rather than tying up their self esteem in what colour socks they are allowed to wear.

Anyway there are two different issues here. Religious dress is not being banned in UK schools. The headscarf (like beards and turbans for Sikhs) is included as a uniform option in the majority of schools. If a teacher claimed a girl wearing a headscarf was a barrier to teaching, then the problem would be with the teacher, not the clothing.

But a niqab is a barrier to communication. That's what this ruling is about. A Head who holds this view can refuse to allow it to be worn in class.

A California school district is being sued over its decision to punish a a seventh-grader...her younger sister, a sixth-grader named Sydni

Okay, so just so we're clear, the 7th-grader had been at the same school the previous year, and knew the dress code. The Tigger socks, while a lovely point for outrage, were not the only items that violated the code:

"a denim skirt, a brown shirt with a pink border, and long socks with pictures of Tigger."

All clothes will be plain (no pictures...
• COLORS – SOLID COLORS ONLY - Acceptable colors are [pink not included]...
• FABRICS – No jeans, denim, denim-looking,...

In fact everything she was wearing broke the rules. So this was a deliberate statement against the dress code, and she knew she'd be punished. Fine, she has a right to protest, but don't imagine she was suddenly dragged to the office with no idea what was happening.

If you believe that a school has a right to enforce a dress code at all, then it is up to them to determine what it is. Winnie the Pooh may be harmless... but many branded or character-driven items are not. They are indicative of gangs, cliques, socioeconomic status, and more. The school cannot spend all day listing precisely what is and is not acceptable.

"Pink socks and two-tones are not a crime. That’s just nitpicking.”

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.

BigV wrote:

There are already rules and procedures to deal with disruptions.

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.

BigV wrote:

Creating a new category of disruption called "religious dress" positively invites conflict, competing opinions about what constitutes "religious dress", and enmity among the members of the community of learning--none of which contributes to learning.

I'm completely with you here, in the sense that it shouldn't be made special--the administrators, if they find it necessary for that particular school's population, should be able to make a rule like "nothing that covers the face" and be allowed to enforce it, both for sports caps and niqabs.

BigV's article makes a big deal about the Tigger socks, but when you read it carefully, you see she was wearing a denim skirt, which was against the dress code. So her skirt was against the dress code, her socks were against the dress code, and her shirt too, which was supposed to be a solid color, but wasn't. She broke the dress code in three different ways.

Edit: I walked away from the computer and then posted when I got back. Meanwhile, Clodfobble said it all, and said it better.

Clodbobble wrote:

"Pink socks and two-tones are not a crime. That’s just nitpicking.”

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.

Happy Monkey wrote:

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.

Clodfobble wrote:

[QUOTE=BigV]There are already rules and procedures to deal with disruptions.

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.[/QUOTE]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.

If you don't have a line in the sand, you will spend all day every day inspecting each grain and watching the line shift. Fine, the kids are learning how to push the envelope, how to negotiate, how to apply spin. They don't need to go to school to learn that, then can stay at home and push their parents' buttons or go to the mall and play the game with the cops. Let's draw a line, somewhere, anywhere and not waste precious teaching time on "freedom of expression" negotiations. Sometimes we all have to conform -some kids wouldn't harm from learning that a little earlier in life.

Oh and note that the article in the OP refers to UK school. It's a different world there, it is usual for schools to have uniforms or strict dress codes, and the ban is not on religious wear per se.

You seem to think a veil would not disrupt teaching. When I teach, I look at the kids faces to see if they understand, to see if they're bored, to see if the have a question they need a cue to ask..... of course I'm an amateur -a parent volunteer who only teaches for an hour a day for two weeks three times a year. But I would say not one of those hours goes by when I don't use facial expressions to help me judge what to say next, when to move on.... surely that is the case in all western schools where facial expression is a major means of communication?

The child who is veiled must verbalize their confusion etc. Many children do not find that easy. Many children do not realize they need something clarified even though it shows on their faces. Much like when younger children need the bathroom -you can tell from the way they are standing, even though they have not yet realized it.

Sundae Girl;324972 wrote:

I agree that the school in the case above was incredibly heavy-handed in dealing with the student wearing Tigger socks.

However I totally support schools having the right to make restrictions on students' appearances and I don't think it prevents anyone thinking for themselves to conform to a dress code.

One of my Mum's (younger) friends was routinely escorted to the Head's office to have her beehive hairdo brushed out and her hair plaited into pigtails.

At my school there was occasional spot checks on make up (it was forbidden) and girls were sent to Matron's office where Matron stood over you with tissues and baby lotion until it was all removed.

We had regulation length skirts, and when I started school, girls used to fold them up at the waist to make them shorter - when I left the fashion was to let the hems out to make them longer.

We knew what the rules were and we knew we had to follow them. We bent them as much as possible, but when we were caught we accepted the measures taken to bring us back into line. The Debating Society had a motion every year re school uniform, and the Student Council often brought it up at staff meetings. We were encouraged to question the rules but follow them while they were still in place.

Students should be encouraged to use their minds to express themselves, rather than tying up their self esteem in what colour socks they are allowed to wear.

Anyway there are two different issues here. Religious dress is not being banned in UK schools. The headscarf (like beards and turbans for Sikhs) is included as a uniform option in the majority of schools. If a teacher claimed a girl wearing a headscarf was a barrier to teaching, then the problem would be with the teacher, not the clothing.

But a niqab is a barrier to communication. That's what this ruling is about. A Head who holds this view can refuse to allow it to be worn in class.

I would agree with you.;)