School To Put Students In 'Prison Jumpsuits' As Punishment

Weellll.....here in the Northwest - there are very few rules as far as I can tell - my teenage roommate has hair that is four different colors - wears torn jeans with short skirts over them and for months and months she wore twenty belts at a time, studded, leather, cloth, beaded - around twenty piercings in her ears and she has a 3.75 grade average which she complains is too low and has to bring it up this year...she goes to public school...but boys can't wear women's clothes - thats where the hard line is drawn I'm gettin old...

Originally posted by Heike
reply to post by eradown

 

I was merely trying to make the point that the GOAL of the American public school system is to provide "educated" workers to business and industry, thereby making the idea that the school environment is preparation for the work environment valid, as someone(s) had contested that idea.

One thing we haven't addressed is where are the parents in all of this? In my day (more years ago than some of you probably want to think about) the teachers did concentrate on teaching, and it was the responsibility of our parents to ensure that we were properly dressed and behaved properly in school. If I got in trouble in school (which I only did once), I was in double trouble when I got home. Today it seems like parents attack the teachers and the school in defense of their rebellious, rude, disrespectful, out-of-control, misbehaving children instead of disciplining them. And therein lies the REAL problem.

The distrust of teachers on discipline matters is the result of past biggoted teachers punishing excessively students from groups they did not like and sending those students home to parents who were too slavish towards authority figures. Public schools are anything but fair. Poor students from poor families are treated more harshly than students from influential families.

This has merited the criticism that the public school system is a prison system. Think about it. The architecture of the public schools is the same as a prison. The warden and guards ( the teachers and principal deside who your kid is allowed to associate with). They do this by picking who your child eats with and where they sit. The bell system is also reminscent of a prison system. Now someone or some group has paid way too much money to design prison uniforms for other peoples children. Are public schools really training tomorrows workers or are they training other peoples children to be prisoners? This is so pertinent because fema camps are being built.


[edit on 31-7-2008 by eradown]

reply to post by eradown


Again, as the only experience I have with the current public school system in America is as a substitute or after-school enrichment program teacher, I will excuse myself from further debate on this particular topic.

The only thing I can add is that the teachers I personally know and have known are not like this. In fact, they tend to dislike the arrogant, spoiled "rich" kids and want to help the poor and disadvantaged kids.

But hey, we all have our own experiences and personal truths. I hope you're wrong but I can't say that I know you're wrong.

There is a part in this discussion that I think everybody is missing. Clothing is something that we use to cover our bodies, and to protect or expose us to the elements. As long as the persons privates aren't showing it should not matter what a person is wearing. And even if they're exposing themselves, why is it such an issue? We're all born with em, it's nature, we should be able to deal with it as opposed to avoiding it.

After reading through this thread I've come to realize that we're all conforming to a certain dress code just because this is what society has deemed acceptable yet there is absolutely no logic behind it. Why should it matter if someone's pants are baggy? How does it affect you?

Just yesterday I read about emo kids getting jumped and beaten up in Mexico over the way that they dress and have their hair. It was completely senseless.

Anyone should dress the way that they want. This goes far beyond school dress code, it applies to everyday life. Why should it matter whether a person is in a suit or in jeans and a t-shirt? In our current society one assumes that the person in the suit is either in a higher position or more professional, but does that make any sense?

I dress well all the time, typically in dress shirts, dress pants. Sometimes nice jeans and shirts. Overall though by todays standards I'm very presentable. However I do this strictly because I find that I get better treatment when I dress this way.

The other day I was coming back from a 5 day camping trip, and I'll admit I looked like a mess. We stopped at a Boston Pizza, which is not a high class place by any means yet because we looked rather messy, we weren't treated nearly as well as those around us.

What I'm trying to say is that these rules that the school is trying to enforce, make no sense, there are no good reasons for them. This applies to the rest of society as well. Just please try to think as to why certain types of clothing bother you, and then think about whether it's even logical for you not to like them. I'm sure that if you'll find that for the most part, what offends you or bothers you about those types of clothing is just something that society has put into your heads and that there is no rational reason to be offended or upset by them.

Wow, what a ridiculously harsh dress code.
At first I wasn't at all concerned over the jumpsuit idea, thinking "how bad could the dress code be?"
(Keeping in mind that I'm only out of highschool for a few months, and STILL thought it was an okay idea)
But wow. My last dress code didn't even have a full paragraph, the students when they were new there weren't sure if it was so the teachers could enforce it however they wanted, or so that they didnt have to enforce it at all.
It was basically along the lines of "If a student wears something inappropriate they can be asked to change their clothing"
I never EVER heard of anyone getting in trouble for dress code violations.
One student was asked by a teacher if he thought his shirt was appropriate (it has a very barely-dressed anime girl on it, which I didn't even notice until it was brought to my attention) and then he put on a jacket or something for that class,
Nobody really got in trouble for anything dress-code related there. Then again, we didn't have any stupid rules about our hair or piercings either.
(Though I'm sure if someone started showing off their nipple piercings they would've had to stop )

Originally posted by Curious_Agnostic
This could backfire. Some kids will see the jumpsuits as trophies for being a badass.

That's what happened over here with ASBO's. Antisocial behaviour orders.

reply to post by Heike
The bad teachers have always been a minority in public schools. By bad I mean mentally unbalanced and sometimes just plain evil. These people more than even the teachers who score low on academic tests result in a poor learning environment. Those who manage the public schools can tell by the test score which teachers should be thrown out. A mentally ill teacher can dramatically lower the test scores of the students that he or she doesn't like. Sadly the poor students and those who do not come from influential families usually get stuck with these winners. The management of public schools know full well they will suffer consequences if a beloved child of a good family is harmed by a public school teacher. This was something I read in doctoral thesis written by an educator published many years ago.

Children are not able to verbalize all that they experience and they are not always able to recognize mental illness in adult authority figures. Usually, it takes many years before they realize that a teacher was emotionally abusive. This usually happens after their spouses and freinds describe all the wonderful kind hearted teachers they had. Public schools aren't always able to keep hateful people away from children ,so they should cool it with their attempts to publicly ridicule students by dressing them up as prisoners.








[edit on 31-7-2008 by eradown]

Id like to apologize for my rage.. I read

"GONZALES, Texas. -- A school in Texas will force students who don't follow the rules to wear prison-like jumpsuits in a controversial move this coming school year."

and grew angry. I didn't even see it was for 'dress code' all i saw was 'breaking the rules' I normally will thoroughly read the op before posting. Probably because I went to such a messed up high school, I don't like to see kids pushed around by their schools, even if they did break the rules.. I know first hand the amount of abuse schools can get away with.

Originally posted by justamomma

Originally posted by eradown
I also find its resemblance to a prison jumpsuit highly offensive.

I find it funny

Little punks need to be taught some respect!!

Parents don't like it? Then they can take their kids out and homeschool them or pay for private education.

I agree with you. I find this hilarious. I wish they could change the uniform to something funnier like THIS.

This is not a sign of NWO.

reply to post by Raverous


Apology accepted, from me anyway.

You and I are gonna have totally different angles on this topic, because, as a kid I was bullied and picked on and harassed by the other kids and the teachers were always my supporters and allies. The kids beat me up and called me names because I was different, the teachers and admin tried to help me and did everything they could to keep me safe. So guess whose side I'm gonna be on!

You could have made me wear that bunny suit and it wouldn't have looked any more out of place than the clothes my mother made me wear. I would have LOVED to have had uniforms, it would have let me look pretty much like all the other kids and not get made fun of and harassed so much.

And as we get older I think we learn that it is who we are that defines us, not what we wear. I'm the same person whether I'm in my overalls and t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off cleaning up horse manure, or in business attire, or in a party dress. Young people tend to define and identify themselves using their attire, and that makes it a much more important issue to them. Even when I was in school you could see some kid all the way across campus and know whether he was a jock, a geek, a druggie, a hippie, or one of the "popular crowd" just by how he was dressed. But that kind of stereotyping and grouping is not a good thing, it's just a different kind of conformity. If you can't dress like a jock, maybe you won't always remember to act like one, maybe you'll just be yourself sometimes instead.

Only in the state of Texas.

I agree that, that dress code is completely ridiculous. One paragraph should be enough. It worked when I was in school and it would work today. We had gangs too - BTW.

With such a ridiculous dress code, they have resorted with equally ridiculous punishment of wearing jail garb.

I think that it's already creating negative attention and no doubt will itself distract from the learning process of those who attend. Stupid, really stupid.

They should find out who came up with this idea and remove them from influencing our children any further - they do not represent the American values and they should themselves be put in jail for abusing their positions and wasting taxpayer money. Put the administration in striped coveralls and lock the door - please.



[edit on 31-7-2008 by verylowfrequency]

This is a pretty disturbing.

I really wish school systems would focus more on opening student's minds to knowledge rather than stomping out individualism and creativity.

I think that the jump suit idea is incredibly dumb. When I was in school the dress code was virually impossible to follow. I actually took time to read the whole thing. Certain colors, logos/pictures larger than the size of a credit card etc. were banned, all the way down to how the clothes should fit on the individuals body was in it. Thankfully, the teachers used good judgement. For instance If a student were to wear a red T-shirt, it was a gang related color and therefore, technically, outlawed according to the district/school dress code. But when things were really noticable a student was made to wear their PE clothes. If the student had forgotten to bring their PE clothes with them that day then they had to borrow some that had LONER written on them. So, I guess what I am trying to say is, it's a waste of money that could be used for more bunson burners or something

What's with all the generalization on teenagers? Have any of you heard of the phrase "Never judge a book by its cover."?

In my school, I go to a public one mind you, we have a dress code that I absolutely hate. I believe someone a page or two back quoted a dress code, which is what mine is. Khaki pants, collared shirt tucked in, no t-shirts other than the school sponsored one, etc.

Who ever said poor kids get picked on unless there's a dress code obviously hasn't bought good quality Khaki pants or collared shirts . Regular Blue jeans would cost much less, same goes for regular t-shirts.

Ah, and I've been given detention for 2 weeks for not having my shirt tucked in all the way. In detention, they won't even let us read a book. We just have to sit there. Is that what you 'parents' want your child to do?

----

But I'm way off topic I think.. The punishment of making students wear a jump suit is absolutely foolish. The teachers and such all yell about how clothing can distract from learning, but they want to make THAT a punishment?

I swear, if I ever have kids, I'm homeschooling them. The public schools are almost as bad as politicians. If you play Foot Ball, or are a Cheer Leader, you can get away with anything. Or if your parents are in a 'higher' position, yep, you bet you can get away with anything. I would know after having a run-in with the School Board.

-Will

reply to post by Heike

The "punishment" includes grades 5-12. So YES some are little children. The districts dress code(which applies to all GISD students) states ALL shirts will have a collar and the logos cannot be more than 2 inches in size. So if some of our lower income neighbors haven't the means to buy NEW clothes and let’s say send them in last year’s clothing...then what?; the child has to suffer ridicule? How sad that our school district has decided to direct so much energy to this as opposed to more important things such as test scores. The dress code already in place the previous school year was not much different than the new one and the teachers did not do a very good job of enforcing the old one. Now we as parents have to wonder how much of an education our students will receive with so much attention focused on dress code violators.

Regarding the original post:

My question is this: What will the pedophile teachers who abuse their power and manipulate vulnerable boys and girls be wearing that year?

Thank you so much for posting this DD.

I hope this adds to some of my discontent that I posed for the punishment of children in the other thread that consisted of placing them in solitary confinement in a dark room. Yeah, let's ruin them young and then let them grow up to be morons, idiots and abusers, just like they were taught.

This can only be explained as stupid and tyrannical any synonyms that you can find fitting in their place.

Originally posted by Basilis
Ah, and I've been given detention for 2 weeks for not having my shirt tucked in all the way. In detention, they won't even let us read a book. We just have to sit there. Is that what you 'parents' want your child to do?

This is why it took me 5 years to pass formal high-school education. I spent half of it in detention being told to shut up and turn around because I arrived 5 seconds late to class in the morning (I have 4 brothers, 3 of them going to school at the same time, not to mention lazy parents that work a lot and brother's all being transported to different schools in the morning at the same time.) Really ludicrous and ridiculous. You know how many times that made me want to almost kill someone or beat someone to a pulp? I'm not a prisoner and I've done nothing wrong so I shouldn't have been treated like one. I was stripped of my name and given a number. I wasn't allowed to put my head down even if I wasn't sleeping, I couldn't rest on my hand with my head up to read. I had to copy the entire code of conduct book for the state of California board of education, but trust me, in the end that's not going to help, it only further pissed me off and made me miss my classes and my work. It did nothing to address the real issue of WHY I was in there to begin with. I had to miss either my entire class period and all the work in it for the day, or the entire day and all the work in it, while I sat in a hot room with no AC copying down jibberish and being treated as if I was sub Human by an egotistical, conceited a-hole because I was literally 5 seconds late to class sometimes. Sometimes only 1 second!

My children, if I have any, will not be attending the California educational system, private or public. It's a disgrace, it's a waste, and it's counter-productive and demeaning to those that have real struggles and real issues.

[edit on 19-10-2008 by LastOutfiniteVoiceEternal]

Originally posted by TheCrankyOne

The rest of the dress code is simple psychology. If you look good, you feel good. What you wear has a large impact on how you act. Also, clean and simple clothing and hair styles required by the school help cut down on distractions.

I don't see any regulations for female hair style, so apparently only males can be distracted by having long hair?
I think it to be absurd that hair length is restricted for men and not women in schools. This is pure sexism and forced conformity.

Having short hair and being clean-shaven for a male is a sign of slavery (i.e. "You don't have the freedom to do what you want with your body" mentalities in military and prison regulations) and was a sign of pre-pubecent lack of wisdom in Greek, Norse, Saamic, Finnish, and Native American cultures. It's subordination to have less facial hair. (Anyone notice Que-Gon Jinn and Obe-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars Ep. I? Good societal example.)

I take care of my brown curly half-back length locks, and the hair is always clean. How does this make me less of a man or less intelligent than a man who conforms to the looks of society?
Men who take good care of their long hair are not they lazy ones; having long hair takes skill and patience. Men with short hair are too lazy to stand out in society, and are therefore weak at heart, no matter if you're "Army Strong."

There are, of course, men who look better clean-shaven and short-haired. If they know why they look the way they do and it is a conscious choice, then they are not stereotypical and conformed, and if they don't yell "GIT UH HAIRCUHT" out of a pickup truck at a longhair and accept that people are allowed to look how they want, then they are OK in my (and many other) book(s). Part of this could stem from racist tendencies, but that should be another thread.

So please, spare me the notion that men shouldn't have long hair because it's a distraction.