freedom of expression/religion in public highschool

[rwahh]

Tell me if this sounds right....

at my highschool whatever the administrators feel is bad.. we can't have/do... the most obvious thing is what we wear... we aren't allowed to have hair longer than our ears... no peircings for boys... clean shaven.. shirts tucked in... you can't wear anything gang related (that includes just plain white shirts... wtf?).. nothing with drugs, alcohol, sex, tobacco, 'devilish' stuff, or the brand 'independent' because our school thinks the iron cross has somethign to do with nazis and stuff.. (btw.. prinicple looks EXACTLY like hitler).... we can't even dye our hair.......... if any of these things are broken we are punished through 'after school detention' for an hour... or myabe 2...

alright.. the thing that is bugging me is that we can't wear what we want... freedom of expression.. to be a little extreme i couldn't wear a satanic shirt to school.. even though it's considered a religion that is reconginized by our government (/me thinks), yet people are allowed to wear christian shirts... anyway.. this is a public school.. funded by our government... since when is a government funded institution allowed to take away our freedoms? i understand that rights can be taked away if there is 'clear and present danger' but there isn't... the reason that they give is that our 'community' feels that way... we have a 'school board' that has like 7 members that decide whatever.. and they decide what they want the school to be...
anyway.. it's really really really stupid that they are acting that way.. since when is it 'freedom to express yourself unless someone else doesn't like it' (which is basically... not a freedom)
i talked to my government teacher about this.. and he basically showed me that he knows nothing.. because he was like 'nooo we are pimp like that' but then as i was walking away he said 'youi can't takeaway someones right unless there is clear and present danger' so either wasnt' paying attention to what i was saying or just retarded.. he told me to run for the school board or whatever.. but you have to be 18.. and i'm 17... soo he's stupid and lame as our school is.. anyway.. anyone else's school like that/is that legal/what?

 

[Ns1]

you should get everybody in your senior class to dye their hair ^ _^

 

[rwahh]

they would give everyone after school detention/saturday school/penis in the mouth

 

[Mangos]

In my public high school the following are banned:

Playing cards.
Yo-Yos.
Any hair not of "natural" color.
Piercings other than in women's ears.
Tank tops. (they expose too much)
Sandals (feet are supposedly a distraction.)
Any clothing endorsing substance abuse, or illegal substances/practices. (that's understandable.)
Short skirts. (except for on reallllly slutty girls that hit on the faculty.)

I left high school after tenth grade because I wasn't learning anything...so I decided to go to college.
Simon's Rock

 

[notfred]

heh, when I read the first paragraph, I thought you went to a private christian school. When I was in high schhol, the dress code was basically: no spikes/chains/weapons, no gang colors, you can't be naked. That was about it.

If you want to try and change things at your school, you should talk to the principal, or organize a "freedom of expression" club, or maybe talk to the ACLU.

 

[Riprorin]

Have you talked to your parents about this? What do they think?

 

[HamSupLo]

high school sucks

 

[Ryan]

<< heh, when I read the first paragraph, I thought you went to a private christian school. When I was in high schhol, the dress code was basically: no spikes/chains/weapons, no gang colors, you can't be naked. That was about it.

If you want to try and change things at your school, you should talk to the principal, or organize a "freedom of expression" club, or maybe talk to the ACLU. >>



Same with my high school. As long as you've got something on, it's aight!

 

[Cyco]

I'm sorry, but the truth is that you have no freedom of anything unless you're over 18.

 

[notfred]

<< I'm sorry, but the truth is that you have no freedom of anything unless you're over 18. >>



This, sadly, is basically true, although there's no constitutional backing for it. But, people over 18 make the laws, and there's a LOT of older people that are scared of youth today.

 

[Martin]

<< I'm sorry, but the truth is that you have no freedom of anything unless you're over 18. >>




So a 17 year old is not allowed freedom of speech? I doubt that somehow.


Yet, what about the 18 and 19 year olds in the guy's highschool?





The whole thing just sounds very very wrong.

 

[UglyCasanova]

Fight the Power!!!

 

[montanafan]

As an experienced educator, my advice to you would be to either stop whining and complaining and get over it because there are reasons for the dress codes, or stop whining and complaining and get busy doing something about some parts of the dress code because you have the right and power to do something about it if you're really serious about it.

As to getting over it, dress codes are something that schools and businesses have a right to implement and are going to be a part of your adult life as well. They're not taking away your right to freedom of expression. You can wear whatever you want in your private life, this is part of your public life. Dress codes are a part of the real world and among other things, maybe they're trying to teach you to grow up. Your teachers have a dress code too, just as almost every other adult who works for a living does. Sometimes it's for safety reasons and sometimes it's for appearance reasons, but it's their right. Do you really want your 50 year old 200 lb. English teacher to have the right to express herself by teaching in her tube top and mini-skirt? I think not! It might be just a little bit distracting.

Most of the seemingly innocent things banned in dress codes are put in there because of the distractions they cause. Time in school should be focused on education, not on what someone's wearing or how they look. Take the dyed hair for example. Students in my school can dye and wear their hair any way they choose, but it does cause problems at times. A kid comes in with multi-colored hair and some other kids in the class start talking about it, then someone makes a derogatory comment about it, the kid with the dyed hair gets upset and next thing you know there's a big argument taking up class time and possibly even leading to a fight or at least visit to the office. The kid who dyed his hair complains about how he has the right to express himself however he wants and the kid who made the derogatory remarks complains that he has the same right. Which brings me to another strange pattern of kids who complain about freedom of expression always complaining whenever someone else exercises their freedom of expression to show their disagreement with or offense at the expression of the other.

Several of the other seemingly innocent things banned in dress codes are instituted, not because of the whims of the adults involved, but because of the ridiculous behavior of students where those things are concerned. At my school, you can't wear headbands. Why not? Because some students in the past thought it would be funny to slide the wearers headband down over their eyes when they were walking down the stairs, and because some wearers decided it would be funny to use the headbands to flip their classmates in class, and because some others thought it would be funny to slide the headband down over the wearers head and then twist it to choke the wearer. Students in our district can't wear sweatpants because so many students thought that it would be so easy to pull them down and "pants" other students that they were doing it constantly.

If you can find something in the dress code that you object to and you can show that wearing those things would not lead to problems or distractions in the classroom, then you should do something about it if it means that much to you. For starters, you can get a petition signed by your classmates and get on the agenda at the next school board meeting. It probably wouldn't get anything changed because most of the signers of your petition are not of voting age, but it could get a debate started and you could get more publicity because the local papers cover school board meetings. You and your classmates could write letters to the editor in the local paper. You could try to get sympathetic adults to support you.

Your rights are not being taken away from you. You have the right to do the things I stated above. The school board writes the dress codes and they are elected officials. If the community doesn't like what they're doing they have the right to publicly address those things, and if they can't get them changed that way, they have the right to vote for new school board members. It sounds to me though that the members of your community support the school board's decisions on the dress code and if you can't get them to change their minds on at least part of it, you're either going to have to live with it or move to another school, because this is a democracy and the majority rules.

 

[Martin]

montanafan, some things are understandably banned, but others are just ridiculous!



<< we aren't allowed to have hair longer than our ears... no peircings for boys... clean shaven.. shirts tucked in... >>



How could having hair longer than your ears or a peircing be a distraction?

 

[Balthazar]

<< they would give everyone after school detention/saturday school/penis in the mouth >>



Hahahaha, penis in the mouth, hahaha....

Seriously though, this is what happens when people lose their nuts and don't stand up and say "ok, hey if you are going to take offense to everything and be a bastard then just go curl up in a dark corner where nobody can get to you"

If people didn't have their underwear cranked up so damned tight it wouldn't matter and people might actually be HAPPY.

Screw that!

 

[montanafan]

MartyTheManiak, that's what I mean about finding things in the dress code that wouldn't be a distraction or cause problems and then try to fight those. He or she is not going to be able to get the entire dress code done away with, but there are some things in there that could be thrown out if a reasonable argument was put before the school board.

None of those things are banned at our school, except that facial piercings may not be hoops over a certain size because of the possibility of getting them caught on something or someone thinking pulling on them might be funny.

 

[HermitGuy]

First it's hardly appropriate to call them public school's any more, their mostly government re-education centers.

The second thing is that young people should learn responsibility and maturity before freedom. Without those freedom is little more than anarchy! I might add that the same goes for a lot of adults to.


If you want to try and change things at your school, you should talk to the principal, or organize a "freedom of expression" club,


Last there's a big difference in freedom of speech and freedom of expression, if I say that the statue of liberty should be taken down because the USA does not really believe in liberty that's free speech, if I blow up the statue that's an expression of my belief, should I be free to do so assuming no one get's hurt. You see there is a difference between the two, the founding father's I think knew this but sadly today the actual words in the constitution are no longer relevant.