How the length of a skirt can inhibit learning?

Clippings from news sources involving fashion freedom and other gender equality issues.
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Uncle Al
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How the length of a skirt can inhibit learning?

Post by Uncle Al »

This is outragous :!:
‘My daughter was put in detention for the day because ‘her skirt is too short.’
The Mama-Bear came out of hiding :!:
She tore the school a 'new-one'.

Can this be applied to boys who wear skirts :?:

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Re: How the length of a skirt can inhibit learning?

Post by crfriend »

It'd be nice, but given current circumstance never will, :(
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Re: How the length of a skirt can inhibit learning?

Post by Coder »

I dunno... at a certain point it's kinda like - yeah the school has terrible rules - but they are the school's rules. At some point the mom must have known what the rules were, agreed to follow them (no matter how stupid), and if she wanted her daughters to keep attending make sure the rules were adhered to (the situation gets trickier if this is public school). And if the rules were so stupid - then go to board meetings and propose better ones.

I went to private school all my life until college, and conformed even though I hated it, wanted to wear skirts and such. Instead I wore button up shirts and ties, dreaded Dockers khakis. I recall girls getting disciplined for not following the skirt-length rules - but the thing is, they were the rules. Arbitrary, soul-crushing, but it's just that - rules. Must everything be a crisis and end up having down-stream effects for the whole of society?

Sorry, that seems totally out of character for me, as I would have loved to flaunt the rules but never had the guts. Maybe this did psychological harm to me, and it's doing psychological harm to kids across the nation, reinforcing stereotypes that are harmful to women, and so on.
Last edited by Coder on Wed Sep 29, 2021 12:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Uncle Al
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Re: How the length of a skirt can inhibit learning?

Post by Uncle Al »

I do agree with her comment about not being able to purchase "school length"
skirts off the rack when they aren't offered in the store. What is a parent
supposed to do in this situation :?:

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Re: How the length of a skirt can inhibit learning?

Post by Faldaguy »

Thanks UA -- a useful 'thought' piece, easily understood and shared to bring folks around. I suspect "RULES" get in the way of love, peace, and sanity more oft than they help....OK, there is a challenge....
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Re: How the length of a skirt can inhibit learning?

Post by Stu »

Having worked in schools (briefly), I have some sympathy for the staff.

The whole idea of uniform is that students are dressed in a style which is identical and conservative, so they are given a uniform list which includes specifications including style - and skirt length. Children will always push boundaries and, what one gets away with, another will copy and then take it one step further. If they are going to have a uniform policy at all, then it has to be strictly enforced - or don't bother. Adolescent girls love the attention from boys that showing off their legs brings them and they will always go as short as they think will be permitted and then find excuses when they are challenged on it. Teachers have heard them all and the most popular ones are "I've had a growth spurt", "my usual skirt is in the wash so I had to wear an old one that was bought two years ago" or "this was the longest one they had".

When I was at school, the rule was drilled into all of us - your skirts must be "navel-to-knee" (that meant your hem must at least reach the top of the knee) and we had uniform inspections periodically. If your uniform didn't comply, you were given a letter to hand to your parents.
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Re: How the length of a skirt can inhibit learning?

Post by shadowfax »

I suspect that part of the problem here is whether school uniform skirts are made available in a wide enough range of waist sizes and lengths?
In the story, which Uncle Al linked, the mother says about her daughter, "She’s 5 foot 6, 12 years old, and has the waist of a 7 year old.".
Surely an average-sized school skirt for a 7 year old child would be of a length appropriate for the average height of a 7 year old? If the woman's daughter was wearing such a skirt then it would be way too short on her 5'6" tall frame?
Last edited by shadowfax on Wed Sep 29, 2021 11:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How the length of a skirt can inhibit learning?

Post by moonshadow »

Man she's upset....

Imagine the argument she must pitch when she gets pulled over for speeding.

Is she in the wrong? Not really, but to pick apart every little injustice you happen upon... good lord if I did that, I'd never have the time to do anything else.
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Re: How the length of a skirt can inhibit learning?

Post by crfriend »

One of the dirty little secrets of the "school years" closely mirrors the function of basic training in the various militaries around the globe -- to completely obliterate any individuality in the "recruit" and to remake him in the desired mould. Few get through either experience without scars, and suicide is a problem during those troublesome times. It's there to "prepare" us for what the future will hold and what will be expected of us as "adults" -- to be mindless little drones working to enrich some other party. To accept mindless rules, regulations, and bad laws. To never dare to push boundaries or exhibit, in the case of men, any emotion save rage. To drive home the fact that "we do it this way because we've always done it this way". In short, it's toxic -- and it's harder on the smart creative ones than it is on the dolts.

And, I suspect the power figures involved enjoy the exercise of unrestrained power -- for the simple reason that they can.
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Re: How the length of a skirt can inhibit learning?

Post by moonshadow »

I understand what you're saying Carl, it's not the overall message [of the mother] I'm having an issue with, it's the tirade.

The article just seems "Karenish" to me and works my nerve a little. Maybe it's the "victim mentality" that's irritating me... I don't know.

Okay.. a little girl got ISS for wearing too short a skirt... this must have happened thousands of times to the girls I went to school with.. it was hardly newsworthy.

School, like employment, you do what they tell you to do... you go home and then you "let your hair down". It's why it's called "free time" because you're free to do what you want... not all time can be "free time".
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Re: How the length of a skirt can inhibit learning?

Post by rivegauche »

I have taught in schools with strict dress codes. The pupils found ways of expressing themselves without breaking them, imposing their own rules on the school ones. I found this quite heartening and never took part in any criticism of a pupil for what they wore. I have seen schoolgirls (who really were schoolgirls) in the street dressed like prostitutes but that is a matter for the parents rather than the school. Yes, short skirts are a distraction to teenage boys but girls are always going to distract teenage boys.

In the same way as I do not criticise others for what they wear I do not criticise grammar as people are entitled to communicate whatever their standards of education. I saw an example of an exception to this on BBC Scotland last night in a programme about Scottish influence on China. Merchiston Academy in Edinburgh is a fee-paying boys' school that is opening a mixed school in China. I have a beef with such schools that they call themselves public schools when they are actually private - they can't even get that right. Back to the point of my story. I can't find their dress code on the internet but I bet they have one, especially in China. The woman guiding prospective pupils and parents round the world-class school they had built in China was using expressions such as "have came" and "have went". There is nothing wrong with using faulty grammar in everyday communication, but this woman was an ambassador for supposedly world-class education. I strongly suspect that this school will pay more attention to skirt length than grammar. The English spoken by the Chinese in the programme was perfect. If you are a teacher pupil control is an issue and I fear that uniform is a tool of this control that is easy to enforce, but at the expense of losing sight of why the pupils are there to begin with.
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Re: How the length of a skirt can inhibit learning?

Post by Fred in Skirts »

crfriend wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 11:10 am One of the dirty little secrets of the "school years" closely mirrors the function of basic training in the various militaries around the globe -- to completely obliterate any individuality in the "recruit" and to remake him in the desired mold. Few get through either experience without scars, and suicide is a problem during those troublesome times. It's there to "prepare" us for what the future will hold and what will be expected of us as "adults" -- to be mindless little drones working to enrich some other party. To accept mindless rules, regulations, and bad laws. To never dare to push boundaries or exhibit, in the case of men, any emotion save rage. To drive home the fact that "we do it this way because we've always done it this way". In short, it's toxic -- and it's harder on the smart creative ones than it is on the dolts.
And, I suspect the power figures involved enjoy the exercise of unrestrained power -- for the simple reason that they can.
In other words Carl to make robots out of the children so that when they become adults they follow the rules mindlessly. The school I went to had a dress code which I tended to break on more the one occasion. I was called down to the principles office and sent home many times. So I would wear the same thing the next day and me parents wear called in because I was being marked as truant in the records. When I finally got so tired of all of the BS I quit school and received a better education in other ways. I was a voracious reader and would not put a book down until I finished it. I read math books, science books, and when I finished them I had an education that stood me well.
I joined the USAF and received my GED certificate and when I got out I had at least the education of 2 years of college under my belt without actually going to a university.
I went to work at the Atomic Energy Site and was a Senior Reactor Operator with the power of the sun at my finger tips. I used all of my self training to do this. And all because I refused to obey stupid dress codes at school.
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Re: How the length of a skirt can inhibit learning?

Post by Faldaguy »

I think we need more mothers, and fathers, getting peeved and delivering some alternative views. Much of this cafe is because men have been conditioned to conform, seldom for any logical reason other than control. That is not the way of achievement or progress. As to 'distractions' -- life is full of them and we learn to parse our focus for the task at hand. Perhaps attractive people and clothes in school are indeed providing an important lesson! And none of that begins to address the aberrations that derive in large part from our inane obsession with bodies, their shape, size, and exposure.... Clothing should be reduced to two key uses: Protection from the elements; and decoration. Let us wear whatever, whenever and we will be a healthier society.
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Re: How the length of a skirt can inhibit learning?

Post by Pdxfashionpioneer »

I don't feel that mother was being a Karen; I feel she had some great insights into herself and how the multitude of arbitrary rules craft the invisible chains that bind all of us. We need more parents such as her; not fewer.

If any party is making much ado about nothing, it's the school be setting rules on something as trivial as skirt length.
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Social norms aren't changed by Congress or Parliament; they're changed by a sufficient number of people ignoring the existing ones and publicly practicing new ones.
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Re: How the length of a skirt can inhibit learning?

Post by moonshadow »

Okay... let's not have any rules.
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