Recognizing the Connection Between Dress and Behavior

The baggy-pants generation in our schools affirms its alleged constitutional right to dress as it pleases. And it pleases to be so scruffy as to invite demurrers from President William J. Clinton, New York City Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew and school administrators nationwide.

For school youths who cannot write a single, literate paragraph about the origins of the Constitution, to invoke I st Amendment protection for the right to dress as slobs borders on sacrilege. Probably not one in a hundred thousand could cite the U.S. Supreme Court decision that has been used in the past quarter of a century to justify the dragging down of learning to the level of their dress.

The youths do not have to cite the law. It is invoked for them by chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Count on the ACLU to be at the court doors whenever its action can destroy discipline in a school.

The bedrock case that has sunk schools in the quicksand of rotten dress and matching behavior in many of the 100,000 public schools in the nation is Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District (1969). The Tinkers sent their children to both elementary and high schools in Iowa. Although the principals had adopted a role prohibiting the wearing of armbands, the Tinker children deliberately wore black anti-Vietnam War armbands.

Tinker Decision Used To Justify Scruffy Attire

A majority of the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Tinker children were exercising 1st Amendment rights of free speech. It is the Tinker decision that is being used up to the present day to justify the scrofulous attire of many school children.

Although Tinker rings a bell with principals, it is not so loud that it has dimmed many court decisions that sustain the right of principals to enforce dress codes designed to prevent school disruption. Apart from the baggy pants, unlaced, oversized shirt tails hanging out, shoulder-length hair, there are T-shirts with messages so vulgar that we shall not repeat them in this column. As a single example, there is the Ohio federal court decision in 1987 that put down students who sued to allow them to attend a prom dressed as a person of the opposite sex. In the court's view, schools have the authority to enforce dress regulations that teach community values and promote school discipline.

In the hope of reforming schools, because they see rightly the connection between dress and behavior, Clinton, Crew and many others are calling for public school children to wear uniforms. Crew has limited this to the first three grades, but the President would cover all grades. Neither would mandate school uniforms.  yanzic0705.

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