First up is this pile of “Common Sense” “Zero Tolerance” bullshit:
A high school student in upstate New York was suspended for wearing an NRA T-shirt that touted the second amendment after he refused to turn it inside out or cover the words with duct tape.
Shane Kinney, a 16-year-old sophomore from Grand Island, located between Niagara Falls and Buffalo, served a one-day, in-school suspension Monday after he refused last Friday to turn his T-shirt inside out at the request of the vice principal at Grand Island High School. The shirt was emblazoned with the NRA logo and the words, “2nd Amendment Shall not be Infringed” across the back.
“Mr. Lauria [the vice principal] told me I had to either turn the shirt inside out or put duct tape over the words,” Shane Kinney told FoxNews.com. “I told them that I wasn’t going to do it. I had to sit in the suspension room and eat lunch alone until my father brought me a new shirt to school.”
Yep a shirt with the NRA local and words from the US Constitution as well as crossed frikkin’ Flint-locks upset these non-thinking so-called “Administrators”.
Nothing on the shirt was ACTUALLY against school policy. The student’s parents are not going to fight the suspension, which I have mixed feelings on. On one hand I 100% understand, as these fights get in the way of a good student getting his diploma and getting the fuck out of his shit-heel “Progressive” school district and becoming a productive citizen.
Still it also encourages this foolish behavior. Maybe other students will choose to wear affirming, but non-confrontational political shirts…
And on another subject I have mixed feelings on:
Teachers in West Virginia’s largest school district don’t want to be told they can’t show up for work in jeans and flip-flops.
In fact, they don’t want to be told how to dress, period.
The Kanawha County school district’s board of ed last week introduced a proposed dress code, which also bars facial piercings, and immediately got a dressing down from the teachers union. It’s not that the local teachers want to wear their weekend attire, they insist, it’s that codifying it so strictly is insulting.
First off, I call bullshit! If the teachers are so “insulted” by this, and it in no way is a problem, why do they care?
Overall I’m 100% fine with there being dress codes for faculty in school, or any other place of employment. If you’re going to pay somebody to do a job, you set standards on that job, and appearance, and conduct are just as important as actual performance, especially given the fact that teachers are public employees both in where their pay comes from, but also from the fact that parents and students are mandated to interact with them by law.
Still most of these teachers are likely my age, and none of us were actually raised in a world where professional dress really equaled professionalism. Also given that my father was a teacher, I frequently saw teachers out side of school and on their own time, heck after I graduated I ended up tossing back beers with many of my former teacher at parties my dad held. It really didn’t change anything for me.
Also I have no tattoos, and no piercings, and for somebody my age, that’s a rarity. The fact that most of the teachers who are 21-35 are expected to NOT have facial piercings seems a little against the tide.
On the other hand, my wife chose to pull out her very attractive nose ring once she started working on a professional level, I know many others who have chosen to tame-down their youthful look for one of professionalism.
In the end, I side with the dress code, as if they don’t like coming to work looking presentable, per the given standards they can go to work at Starbucks and look like total hell.
And flip-flops? Seriously? I think anybody who wears them in a public space is a damn fool. I mean what if you need to RUN?
I miss the old liberals who were all about free speech. Can’t we get some of those back?
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Unfortunately they weren’t “Free Speech” they were “Anti-Establishment”, and like all true “Progressives” Goal Posts are portable, and even in schools where “Progressives” are the establishment, they have decided that Non-“Progressives” are the machine they must rage against.
They were always for the same kind of “Free Speech”, being you have the freedom to agree with them.
Spot on.
I wouldn’t get upset about the t-shirt suspension if I believed the rule is uniformly enforced. But I beg permission to doubt that a girl who showed up in a shirt she bought from Feministing would end up in detention next to NRA-boy. It’s one thing to restrict clothing with controversial messages in school, that makes sense. It’s quite another when it’s only messages “they” disapprove, which is probably the case.
As to teachers – flip-flops and facial piercings? It has really degenerated to this? I’ve never worked any job that didn’t have some sort of dress code, and for a person who’s paid to stand in front of a bunch of kids all day to insist on his right to facial piercings is just absurd.
(sigh) But then I should stop being surprised by absurdity…
I’m with Joel, there is no way this is fairly enforced. Che shirts showing a murdering scumbag — acceptable. Words from our own Constitution unacceptable.
“2nd Amendment Shall not be Infringed”
I would ask if they are going to take those words out of the text books but then I remember they have been trying and succeeding in doing that for years.
Love the teacher hypocrisy — they want a dress codes for the kids whose parents pay their salary but they don’t want a dress code for themselves.
Makes me think of the words of St. Francis Xavier about ‘give me the boy of 7 and I will give you the man.’ They’re getting the kids comfortable with conformation to their ideals, and that’s a terrible thing.
I’m proud to say that my boy is a ‘difficult’ student, but has no behavioral issues. I take the credi…er, blame, every time he refuses to agree with his teacher until she can prove him wrong if he truly believes in an idea.
I have to agree with you on the dress code, and that’s where I think charter and private schools do well in creating uniform policies. Granted, I grew up in Catholic schools. Even now, after getting a contract to move oil for BP (among other regular charterers for my boat), they have a checklist that includes “vessel representative is of smart and professional appearance.” As Master after God, I still gotta toe the line. I actually don’t mind.