Texas schools try to corral kids through jewelry and clothes
By John David Powell (07/14/06)
Public school officials up in north Texas still don't have a clue when it comes to figurin' out how to maintain discipline and control in the classrooms. They've made that perfectly clear with some goofy additions to their dress codes.
The Arlington Independent School District now forbids grills and gauging. A grill makes your mouth look like the front of a ’54 Cadillac. Hence the name.
Don’t confuse grills with braces. Parents use braces to straighten their kids’ teeth and to give them pretty smiles that they can cover up with grills so that they can hang out with their homies and not feel out of place.
Here’s how one web site (www.icedoutgear.com/grillz-gold-teeth.php) markets the stuff.
“More gangster than any accessory on the market, GRILLS are more than just Gold Teeth, they help all your homies know that you are the ultimate pimp. All the ladies will want to see your grill!”
Well, there ya go.
Gauging is right out, too. Gauging is the practice of stretching out the earlobe until you can drive a ’54 Cadillac through it without touching skin.
Arlington school officials said grilling and gauging are distracters or safety hazards. Imagine getting your grill stuck in someone’s gauge during passing period. You might mistakenly get sent to the office for making out in the hall.
Nearby school districts in Irving, Grand Prairie, and DeSoto have also put the kibosh on grills, and some have closed the loop on gauging, in hopes of instilling in the kids a sense of modesty and a sense of community, and as a way to prepare them for the work place.
And, you know, that’s important, because I can’t recall any of the ENRON honchos sporting grills or grotesquely enlarged earlobes.
This literal cosmetic approach to discipline and control reminded me of a dress-code situation I shared with readers several years ago, back when my younger daughter entered middle school. The school administrators saw the dress code as the key to maintaining discipline.
“Last year we used the District's dress code, but we felt we wanted a stricter code,”
a representative explained at the parent orientation meeting. “Now, I can't say whether the strict dress code is working, but I can tell you that discipline problems have decreased fifty percent over last year when we used the District's dress code. We have a calmer atmosphere. There's more teaching going on in the classroom, because the teachers aren't taking time out to handle disruptions. And we have less discipline problems.”
Praise the Lord, I thought. But I didn't say it out loud. Down the road a piece is Santa Fe, where parents and students locked horns in moral combat over the right to pray before football games.
You may be asking yourself what made the new strict dress code such a powerful force in the war for control of the classroom. Was it in the shirts, which had to be of solid Yuppie-approved colors with a collar, no stripes, no logo or label? Was it in the trousers of the same description as the shirts, and not made of denim or leather or nylon or spandex or any other stretch material, with no oversized pockets? Could it have been in the skirts that had to be like the trousers except they were skirts, with hems within six inches of the ground when kneeling?
No. The force that kept law and order in this town's middle school had two words: Land's End. And just to make sure we parents didn't forget the name or the fact that the Land's End folks had the school's strict dress code (not the District's dress code) at their fingertips, each of us received the official catalog.
Your next question is obvious: How can one be certain Land's End was responsible for the school's calmer atmosphere and lower disciplinary problems? The answer came out of the locker room.
“Our coaches have found that some of the students who used cheap locks have their lockers broken into and their things stolen,” explained one administrator.
One may well ask how there could be crime in a school where discipline problems were been cut in half in less than a year. Land’s End clothing is the answer.
When the kids go to gym classes, they take off their Land's End attire, their shield against evil, and immediately turn into thieves and vandals. Calm and civility return when gym class is over and the kids put their clothes back on.
Forget banning grills and gauging. Land’s End clothing is the simple and fashionable solution to education's discipline and teaching problems.
John David Powell is a six-time winner of the Houston Press Club’s Lone Star Award for Internet Opinion Writing, a communication professional, and a contributor to the Christian History Project.
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