Doc Martens? Forget it!

The Stroudsburg area school district has some ideas about how students should and should not dress for school. I’ve just finished reading the 7 page document that they hope to make into a reality and I’m a little concerned and a lot confused. Now it’s been more years then I would like to admit since I was in school. But I remember it like it was yesterday, mostly because my emotional age has never progressed much beyond high school. One thing that I can’t forget is how much I hated to be told what to do. Typical teenage rebel. But it didn’t hurt me and I think it helped me to question authority and I still do just that. Just because “they” say it, doesn’t make it so. Don’t forget I grew up in the “Nixon” years. But back to Stroudsburg. If the powers that be have their way and it looks like they will, the restrictions on how kids can dress will be, to put it mildly, rather limited. Stroudsburg is mandating not only pants, shirt type and color but the style of shoes (no Doc Martens!), color of shoelaces and how they are tied. If you go to school even if you have a shirt on you can’t wear anything but a plain t-shirt underneath. No colored contacts. You can wear a belt but it must be brown, black or tan. You can have small stud piercings but don’t even think about a barbell. Girls can wear “Hosiery” but it must be an approved color and style. I don’t think black fishnet stockings which I clearly recall girls in my class wearing, will make the cut. And hooded or thermal tops are not permitted. In fact that is mentioned twice. You get the idea. In short Stroudsburg school administrators want everyone to look the same. Why? In their words: To increase safety (Doc Martens are a hazard?) Promote school pride (Aren’t you proud you can wear a plain t-shirt kids?) and to decrease peer pressure associated with dress. It’s that last line that gets me. For the rest of their lives Stroudsburg kids might well look on somebody who dresses better, or worse or different than they do as being “Wrong” because that’s what they were taught at school. Conform or be punished! So if you peek into a Stroudsburg classroom you might have a little trouble telling the robots apart. But you will be able to tell who the teachers are. They have no dress code. I may have been asleep for much of my history class but I seem to remember a certain group of kids who all dressed the same. They all wore brown shirts. And that didn’t turn out so good did it? Or then again I could be wrong.