Good, sensible reasons both
But then you go on to say…
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If there’s a rule of behavior, there must be (or at some point have been) some reason for it, however odd it may seem today.
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Because going faster creates a higher risk of injury or death in an accident, and consumes more fuel.
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Or on the left, but just everyone on the same side, 'cause if everyone goes any which way they have a higher likelihood of running into other people and injuring themselves and it slows down movement in the hallway
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Because they’re living beings, as you are, and death should not be dealt gratuituously; besides pigeon carcasses lying around create a mess and can attract vermin which spread disease.
Similarly, not wearing a hat IN class may be justified by wanting to see the student’s face at all times, and preventing him/her from concealing contraband under it.
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This last is good advice, but I must strongly disagree with the apparent meaning of your item 4 that the mere existence of a “rule” is justification in itself. As occ just said, even the ones that seem to be ceremonial formalities are really ways of making social interactions easier by taking into account the feelings of the other parties.
Yeah, I used to do this. I listen to a lot of bass-heavy music and I used to go through earbuds every month or so because the drivers couldn’t survive the signal (i.e. they started buzzing like crazy). So I cought these awesome headphones (not super big DJ ones but the smaller Studio Monitors by Sony) and those are tough to hide.
I don’t believe school should be 100% learning all the time. It’s super hard for anyone (especially teenaged types) to concentrate like that for 6 hours. It just doesn’t happen, not even the teachers do this (though they probably do have school related work after school is over).
The money thing, I understand (though I don’t necessarily agree with). If this is why, then I guess I won’t bother trying to change it. But if his were the case, they probably shouldn’t let us have cell phones either.
Good point. How about this example? You have a meeting that takes place in an office setting. (It could be a business meeting, an interview, or a doctor visit.) Scenario one: When you walk in, the gentleman behind the desk nods, reaches up to shake your hand, and invites you to sit down. Or, scenario two: he gets up, walks around the desk, shakes your hand, offers you a seat, and then sits down himself.
It is a fairly subtle thing, but getting up to shake someone’s hand indicates a degree of respect. There is certainly no real need to do so, and the social interaction is taken care of by the handshake. But I know that I feel very differently when exposed to those two situations.
I feel the same way about removing my hat indoors. It serves no real purpose other than to offer respect. My feeling is that we are alienated from each other enough these days. (And I don’t mean just this last week or so. I’m thinking of the fast-paced, anonymous, sheltered existence that many of us are in.) Any gesture that offers human feeling and good will is a good thing.[sup]TM[/sup]
Soup, if you just want to listen to the music, take the headphones, run them to an outside pocket in your backpack, crank the volume, and lay your head down on the pocket. Looks like you are resting your head, but only you know the secret.
To all the people who have put down high schoolers as being whiny brats: get a clue, okay?
I graduated this May. The group (of roughly 60 or so, give or take a few–we were actors/musicians) that I called my “friends” had to be the most conscientious and studious group of people I have ever met.
Yet the administration hated us. Why? We didn’t like football–we were “weirdos.” We dressed funny, we talked funny, we participated in activities that happened not to be football/baseball/whatever. Worst of all, we had “opinions.” We cared about the world.
We were seen as “troublemakers.” We did nothing harmful to the school–most of us were A and B students. We never got in trouble for violating school dress code.
However, football players and baseball players got to walk out of class whenever they wanted to, because they were who they were. They could fail and teachers would change grades (and yes, I know they were failing because I saw the grades they got on their papers–they thought their D’s and F’s were funny). They could say anything to anyone, bully anyone, and no one would say a word to them. The cheerleaders and majorettes could break dress code and wear the sluttiest clothes to class.
But whenever we did anything considered “bad”–(the drama club went to Pizza Hut after a matinee on a school day)–the principal threatened to suspend us all for 3 days because we didn’t return to school RIGHT AFTER THE PERFORMANCE.
However, whenever one of his beloved athletes wanted to take a nap or go out to eat or just cut school, it was fine.
I hated that place. I’m glad I’m gone. I didn’t make trouble, and I still got punished for it.
I have a scholarship to a major university now, no thanks to them. I don’t consider most of them even important in my academic life. The teachers were scared to do anything thought-provoking, for fear the administration wouldn’t like it. A lot of what I learned, I learned on my own.
Of course, not all athletes were not as I described above. However, most were.
Not all teenagers are selfish, or stupid, or apathetic. Please don’t insult us with generalizations.
As we all know, people will try to find their way around any rules. In regard to hats I’m quite sure that they originally banned baseball caps due to the problem with “keeping your eyes on your own paper” when the head is tilted down.
So then some enterprising kid brings in a hybrid cap which isnt a baseball cap but is worn so low on his brow that it is also difficult to be sure he is keeping his eyes on his own paper…
You cannot compromise people in certain situations because they will bring every conceivable exception to your attention each and every day on end. The best solution in that case is to ban them altogether.
And for those of you who think a school can ban a winter cap when the kid is outside or on their way to school you are a fool and are really showing your prejudice against the educational institutions of our country.
All of you condescending taffers can plant your lips on my fuzzy white butt and kiss like you’ve never kissed before!
(Especially Spavined Gelding for his Draft comment. You, sir, are not funny.)
It doesn’t matter how melodramatically oppressed high school students might -think- they are, it has to do with how little -anyone- takes them seriously. And all of you detractors are illustrating that point wonderfully.
Weren’t any of you ever in high school? Don’t any of you remember getting shafted in what you could and couldn’t do because of the idiots for whom all these rules and bans are implemented?
[rant]At my school, the gates were closed, locked, and -chained shut- once we were in session so that nobody could ever leave until the end of the day. We called it a “closed campus”. If you didn’t brown-bag your lunch every day, you had to pay outrageously inflated prices at the lunch carts just to eat every day.
I had to deal with teachers and administrative staff that would -bully- students to keep them in line if one were to challenge their reasoning.
I was told by the vice principal who harassed and molested me that nobody would ever take a student seriously. That our school wasn’t a democracy, and it just didn’t work that way.
After being dragged away by security staff one day, and being tested and searched for drugs because a lone secretary “thought I looked funny”, I’m inclined to believe him. And I was a straight A student.
Once we get out of high school, that all miraculously changes. Suddenly, we are thrust into a position where we have much more right to action as we get on with our lives, and after the nosebleed that high school is, it takes awhile to learn how to use it effectively. I’m with everyone else who says that High School makes up the worst years of my life.[/rant]
It’s the little things that matter most. In high school, there are enough “little things” to drive a person insane. What type of clothing are we banning this week? What kind of electronic devices? What national tragedy are we using to restrict our choices this time? Which pair of shoes can I wear to PE, and which pair will get me expelled? These are the sorta things that students have to memorize.
Except for the jocks. And the ASB. And the Pep Squads. If you ever wanted to see the most blatant examples of favoritism in the whole world…but another poster already covered this.
Anyways–you condescenders know who you are. So I won’t name names. Irritants. Weren’t any of you ever students once?
Really? The fact that I lived through this doesn’t influence your opinion about this at all? I guess I’m a fool for remembering all those mornings of having my ears half frozen off waiting for the teachers to come unlock the class rooms.
It just seems strange to me that in college we are allowed to don headgear, listen to music, wear whatever damn clothing we want, carry cells phones, have stuff written on or attached to our backpacks, carry tylenol in case of cramps, chew gum, send email from the library computers, wear buttons stating political opinions, post papers of public concern up on community bullitin boards, adhere to journalistic standards and use proffesors’ full names in student publications, skateboard or rollerskate to and from school, carry our backpacks inside the library, enter adminstrative offices from the front door, and public voice dissent or critism of school policies. All of these things were banned from my high school. All of these things arn’t given a second thought in college. Somehow, even with all these freedoms, the university doesn’t blow up. We arn’t, of course, allowed to use cell phones or CD players during class. but what we do between classes is limited only by what is legal.
I know that there is a big difference between college kids and high school kids, and there are plenty of things that high school kids can’t handle (like freedom to choose when to skip classes or come and go from them at will). But, I think high school kids can handle wearing hats. Unjustified blanket rules not only undermine the students, it undermines the teachers as well. When they instituted a blanket ban on hats in my high school, a lot of teachers complained that they didn’t mind headgear and even supported it in the case of PE classes. They resented not being able to properly regulate their classes in accordance to their teaching style. Us kids resented being treated like children and not being allowed to make even the tiniest most insignifigant choices about our lives. We felt very disempowered and very resentful. How can we be expected to behave like adults when we wern’t given event he slightest smattering of trust? These feelings did not contribute to a positive learning environment. They fueled rebellion and disaffection with education in general.
I love telling this story…one teacher in my old middle school confiscated about 7 hats because they had an old english DH on the front. The hats actually belonged to our baseball team. Coach of our Desert Hills baseball team had to go bust them out after school.
[sup]Not important, just thought I’d share[/sup].
I’m back. See I haven’t missed much. For those who want a Rights-Duties analysis of the great hat and tunes controversy and the general oppression of high school students, here we go.
In the US it is pretty well accepted that the individual States have a duty to provide a basic education at public expense. In most, maybe all States that is established by statute as being twelve years of primary and secondary education and some places an additional year of pre-primary education. Student’s have a right to have that education provided to them and, depending on the State’s particular scheme, may have an obligation to attend until, for example, age 16. At that point the student may not have an obligation to attend school, but the State still has an obligation to provide it.
While the student may take advantage of the State’s duty to provide education, that obligation to provide and the student’s right to receive in not entirely with out strings. The State, and its agent the local school district may establish rules for a student to attend; these often include rules of behavior and dress. So long as those rules are rationally related to the schools operation and do not impermissibly restrict fundamental civil liberties the rules are legitimate and may be enforced, if the authorities chose, by with holding access to the schools to students who are other wise entitled to a public education.
The rational connection requirement for school rules is much more vague than some people would like. Worded completely the standard is that a rule is reasonable, and not impermissibly arbitrary and capricious, if a rational school board/administrator could reasonably think that the rules in some way promote or facilitate the accomplishment of some end that the school is authorized to seek. That the rule may or strike a particular person as unnecessary or dumb does not get around the “rational school board- legitimate end” analysis. The no hat/no CD players rule may well fall under the dumb but legitimate category.
The most rational rule is void if it impermissibly restricts a fundamental civil liberty, to include the right of free speech, to be free of unwarranted searches, and the privilege against self-incrimination. There is no Constitutionally protected right to take a CD player to school, or to wear a hat in a schoolhouse.
With regard to the draft, in the bad old days of the draft a fair number of us abruptly learned what it is like to be suddenly subjected to seemingly pointless inflexible rules. What do you mean, I have to get up at 5:00 in the morning? What do you mean there isn’t any other food? What do you mean I have to wash pots all day? What do you mean I have to polish my shoes? Some thought the whole thing was horribly unfair and was really screwing up their pursuit of having fun while we were young, or of starting careers. Some were killed and maimed doing something they had no wish to do. We got over it. For the most part we kept our mouths shut. This may serve as an example to others whose ability to do just what they want, just when they want, and just where they want may be limited
The draft exists for the nation’s best interest–not for the individual’s best interests. The school, on the other hand, is supposed to be a facility that services us, the students. Thus, we -expect- to have some sembalance of respect, opinion, and -power- over that which is provided for us. Instead, there are some of us that recieve blanket bans and harassment under the -pretense- of a valuable public service because of the few that ruin it for us all.
In college, academic standards are fixed and set high, usually by the faculty that works there. In high school–the standards always seem to cater to the lowest common denominator. The fact that -some- of us are upset with this does not make us “bratty”.
The reason that high school treats its students like children is because the students are children, being, for the most part, minors. The reason that colleges (as many have pointed out) give their students more freedoms is because most of the students are no longer minors and therefore are mostly responsible for their own behavior. Giving 14- to 17-year-olds too much “power” over the environment in which they are educated is not in the best interests of the students, despite their many protests to the contrary.
Since, in the eyes of the law, most high school students are children, the adults/authority figures given the responsibility of educating them are also given the authority of deciding what is best for them. Does this sound unfair? Yes, of course. However, that does not change the fact that children are not given (nor should they be given) control over the environment which raises/educates them when it comes to issues of rules/policies. Whether it’s a 5-year-old unhappy with his bedtime or a 15-year-old unhappy with his school’s dress code, the fact remains that each is a minor left in the charge of an adult or several adults who have the best interests of each in mind.
(Of course, for those high school students who are indeed legal adults of age 18 or higher, the above may not apply.)
Ashtar asks, “Weren’t any of you ever students once?” Yes, and when we graduated and became adults, we came to realize that teenagers need to have rules, even if we may not have agreed with that fact when we were teenagers. We sometimes even came to agree with the rules we used to hate and/or break.
Finally, ranting and then calling someone “irritant” does come off as just a smidge bratty.
I’ll agree with you on that; by following the rules of etiquette, one shows that they (a) are attempting to overcome their animal instincts, and (b) are attempting to be respectful by following the standards of politeness. I’m just saying that the “hat” rules are more arbitrary; it’s unlikely that handshaking, saying “please” and “thank you” are likely to be stricken from the annals of etiquette, wherease hat-wearage could very well be.
What clothes to wear and what music to listen to or when to listen to music and the importance you attach to them are part of the hype you mention below. They are of no practical importance in learning to make the right life decisions.
This is very odd. It’s a health issue and could get the school in serious legal trouble unless allowance is made for students with health problems.
You missed one detail: it’s not America as a whole that hypes this. It’s mostly from the companies with stuff to sell.
Most teens do not cause trouble. But there are some (and I know this is hard to believe) that think it’s amusing to deliberately make themselves unwelcome and then to hide behind well-behaved teens.
There’s always extra studying. That is much, much more important than anything you’ve mentioned so far. Too boring? :shrug:
P.S. Use of hyperbole doesn’t increase your credibility.
That’s very noble rhetoric, but what specific things would you suggest to teach these lessons? The things you’ve mentioned so far are of little worth towards this.
Although I am now an agnostic, I was raised Catholic. I went to Catholic schools and entered a Catholic college in 1968. By today’s standards my environment prior to college was extremely limiting, repressive and borderline abusive. By your theory, I and all of my friends should have had terrible problems handling the freedom of college and adult life. I and one or two other friends had some adjustment problems, but none of us as serious as you describe. I suggest that your theory is wrong, that even now the majority of freshmen handle college adequately, that you are speaking of a relatively small but visible group, and that this is not the real cause of college students not handling their freedom.
And rules against a specific thing, for example, a specific type of hat, are called discriminatory. Rules against hats with a certain characteristic are “challenged” by people with hats that just barely have that characteristic. The impression I’ve been getting is that a lot of students want no rules at all.
If you were my kid, I’d give this bastard an extremely painful and frightening near-death experience.
I’m with you on this one.
Hint: what’s happening to the earbuds is also happening to your ears. Turn the volume down to prevent more damage to your ears. I SAID, TURN THE VOLUME DOWN TO PREVENT MORE DAMAGE TO YOUR EARS.
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in 7 years. - Mark Twain
Hey, I listen to music at a very respectably low level. The reason why the drivers are breaking is because they can’t handle the bass, not that I’m cranking up the volume to 11. In fact, I rarely ever push the volume past the 2 or 3 mark.
I don’t know how to say this without some of you thinking it’s condescending, but it’s pretty well-documented, as empirically as you can go about documenting this sort of thing, that as you mature you gain better capability for making decisions. No offense to the 17-year olds in the world, but at 17 you may not make decisions as well as you will when you are 21. Or 27. I have no doubt that some of you at 17 make better decisions than some of the 27 year-olds I know. But generally speaking, the trendline for individuals goes up, and as a group teens are not as responsible, rational, or self-sufficient as their elders.
That’s why some of us generalize in this thread, and that’s why we don’t see the application of rules to your life as an oppressive thing. I also don’t buy the argument of “How can I learn to make decisions if you don’t give me freedom?” You get increasing freedoms as you mature. Just because you’re not getting all the freedoms you’d like at the moment doesn’t mean your ability to learn life lessons is stymied. Yes, getting to make decisions helps one to mature, but it’s also the case that just growing up and experiencing things (regardless of the cruel rules forced upon you) will increase your ability for moral reasoning.
The main method of torture is to take away an inmates feeling of dignity and control. They take away his sense of time an place. They control when he eats, sleeps and even void his bladders. Eventually this breaks his spirit and he gives up the secrets that he has been sworn to keep.
I am not comparing high school to torture (although some would say it is appropriate), but clearly the ability to make life’s little decisions is essential to the ability to make the big ones.
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I found that schools can buck leagality at times. For example, by monitering our email, our school was opening itself up to immense liability (because it was then in essence taking responsibility for our email). That didn’t stop them. They do all sorts of things that are quasi-legal. Who is honestly going to rule against a school on such a minor thing?
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No, it was the police officer that would smile as they walked by me while I ate lunch on a bench in a public space while I was at work and dressed in a business suit, and would the very next day write me up for loitering and harrass me as I ate lunch in my punk rock leather jacket in the same place. It was the people who are trying to kick the drum cicle people out of the Wednesday night Santa Cruz farmers’ market because they are there to do more than shop. It is the Sacramento city council that made it fiscally impossible for local venues to hold all ages shows.
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Most blacks do not cause trouble. But there are some (and I know this is hard to believe) that think it’s amusing to deliberately make themselves unwelcome and then to hide behind well-behaved blacks
Please. Teenagers, like any other group, deserve to be judeged on an individual basis according to their merits or lack thereof. It is just as wrong to trail someone in stores, kick them out of public spaces, write them up for loitering, harrass them and otherwise diservice them because they are young instead of old as it is to do so because they are black instead of white.
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When a Sacramento police officer decided to harrass a teenager sitting on a bench in a public space (Old Sacramento), this is exactly what he said. First, he told her that the benches were for decoration and not for sitting. She pointed to an older couple that was sitting on an identical bench a few yards away. He then accused her of looking like a runaway and searched her backpack, leafing through every paper to make sure she wasn’t the person he was “looking for”. Then, when he realized that she was doing something that was entirely within her rights, he told her that she should go home and study. On a Friday.
Why people think that teenagers ought not to need anything to do because they should be studying, and yet never ask themselves why they arn’t out writing reports for work or networking twenty-four hours a day is beyond me.
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Lets see. I’ve seen bright kids fail their classes because they never learned how to set a reasonable bed time. I’ve seen one person kicked out because he never learned how to drink responsibly. I’ve seen my roomate drop out because he didn’t learn how to budget his time. Beyond that is the sheer amount of first-month-in-college casual sex and drug use.
Most of these failures arn’t spectacular. And most of them arn’t damning. They either make it through on academic probabtion or they decide that college isn’t for them and go on to the world of employment. You get occassional cases of the kid that drinks himself to death, but most of these problems fall below the popular radar.
Wow…People really do believe that teenagers (who are actual human beings, last time I checked) are not worthy of consideration and are better off regulated to the point of non-existance. I always thought I was just paranoid as I high-schooler…turns out that I was really being perceptive.
I know that teenagers arn’t adults, but they are on the cusp of adulthood. They sentient beings who will, within a matter of a few years, be making the most important decisions of their lives. And yet today we treat them like heathen who best be kept quiet and out of sight.
There is a serious problem with our education system. It is not working on a grand scale. Our only solution seems to be to tighten ship and restrict students more and more. Some people long for the old days, when students in neat uniformed rows answered in unison (and those people conveinetly forget that in those days few people ever made it to high school.
It hasn’t worked, folks. In high school I knew three straight A students who dropped out (to take their GED and enter a community college) because they were sick of the BS. I knew countless people that decided that their job were more useful and more important than sitting in a classroom following rules. I knew even more people that turned defient and spent their days thinking of new and creative ways to rebel. Even the good kids were holding their breaths just waiting to get out of there.
If we want to see kids care about their education, their education has to care about them. We must treat them with dignity. This does not mean that we give them full reign, but rather that we treat them with an amount of respect. If we want these kids to stop acting like second graders and more like adults, we have to give them a little bit of trust. How can you expect someone to act like an adult when you treat them like children? And if we want them to devote themselves to their educations, we have to make them see that their education is more than a set of rules and demands hoisted on them. We have to let them feel like they have some control over it. In the places where they don’t have control, we have to give them understanding of why that is. Kids arn’t stupid. They can see when they are being treated with respect and when they are being talked down to. And kids have a BS meter that is well tuned and has a lound alarm.
Amen, even seven! I often remind myself that no matter how bad things get at least I’m not in high school anymore. Yes, most high schoolers are legally children, but many of them, for better or worse, have adult responsibilities. Many have paying jobs, many are making car or insurance payments, most are coping with the very adult responsibilities that come with having sex, a few are parents themselves. And as for high schoolers that are legally adults, well, it just becomes a bit ridiculous. I remember thinking, “I can be drafted, get married, vote, and sign binding contracts, and I have to ask for a hall pass to go to the bathroom? WTF?”
