In my opinion, the lack of well dressed teachers and students has helped lead to the education turmoil we see in America today. And yes, believe it or not, I began my career after college by taking a position as a high school history teacher. I later decided that I wanted to make my own fortune, and therefore I left to start my own PR business, but that is another story in itself.
But again, I believe the lack of well dressed teachers and students has partially lead to the decline of education in the US. How could this be......well it is simple. Whether or not our grandparents or parents attended a private or public school, they all seem to have a similar charm at one point in history. Professors/teachers always wore a jacket and tie, and the students were forced to dress in a similar fashion. This dress code help to stabilize the children, and having a professionally dressed teacher help to set the stage for discipline. You see, a dress code also forced parents to be involved with their children and their clothing choices. In a sense, the clothes brought out attitudes of respect, discipline, and cooperation.
In today's society, teachers wear jeans, sneakers, and sweatshirts on a daily basis. Students dress in medieval......well, and the girls are half naked with their chicken and beef hormone advanced breast bouncing everywhere. It is distracting to the young boys, and heck, it even distracted me at times. Because teachers and even principals look so unprofessional, I think the state legislatures began to loose faith in their abilities, and they regulated the heck out of the classroom with hoola hoops, and standardized test after test to jump through. It is also fact that schools that have strict dress codes perform better, even in today's muddled climate.
I guess I will finish with this......when teachers start dressing like professionals, and when we have strict dress codes for students, you will see a rapid rise in education in the US. Plus, some of the politicians may get their nose out of the education business, and entrust those who actually attended college to learn to teach to actually teach.
A former Headmaster of Hotchkiss (Prep School My Dad Attended) having a puff. My goodness.....the people today would want his neck for such a display....
30 comments:
I think you have a point. For what it's worth, I use dress to establish authority in my classroom (I teach English at Missouri State). I'm young and I run a fairly laid-back classroom, but I use my clothes as a subtle reminder that I'm still the teacher. It seems to work. And, yes, I've been known to smoke a pipe.
Here are couple of pictures I took awhile back in professorial garb: one with orange and cords and one with a sweater vest.
I completely agree. I worked in New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina and was shocked at how casually the teachers dressed (e.g. Juicy tracksuits, Coach handbags, flip flops). Half of the time, I mistook them for students (given that I was, of course, in a suit, and expected a similar level of professionalism).
Love the blog!
Richard- You have every reason to believe that a dress code is somehow relatively speaking, a key to better performance in (post-secondary) schools. While your arguments about discipline, respect, and how a dress code sets precedent in a law abiding institution seem logical, I would disagree with your argument in light of the following that 1) I would rather prefer that my children be obligated to sport a common uniform or dress code in grammar school and that 2) Students in secondary schools do dress hideously and are in need of a common dresscode.
Now let me proceed with my side of the story.
1) One's fashion and taste is a reflection of one's lifestyle and thus the encarnation of one's upbringing,
2)Although speculation leaves room to suggest that a standard dress code is somehow linked to better performance in school, it is flawed on the basis that one's dress alone cannot stimulate one's thought process and therefore his/her performance, and
3)To state or allude that the decay of education in America is largely attributable to a fashion crisis in grammar school doesn't address the fact that the rank of US Colleges and Universities are among the highest in comparison to international post-secondary institutions.
4) People don't care about such things these days. Watch All Things Digital 5, where Steve Jobs and Bill Gates engage in dialogue over techn. and innovation. They wear jeans and t-shirts. They represent the upper echelon of society. What kind of society? Maybe not the WASP society but an innovative one...Now who cares?
A
Agreed. And another thing - gentleman will no longer be required to wear a coat in tie in the white house. What's next?!
I'm going to go with the post as being tongue-in-cheek. If it's not, it is completely idiotic in its argument. I'm sure anything I have to say will be trumped by the 20 teachers I'm sure will comment on this.
I don't know, Richard. At most secondary schools in England, a blazer and tie are mandatory, and the teachers dress as professionals should, but education is on the slide here as well.
I wore a suit and tie for school from seven to eighteen, but I think my contemporaries and I managed to be unruly despite our attire.
The only way to avoid the jumping-through hoops culture is to go private, and even then the national exams that must be taken to attend university are stultifying in content and require minimal intellectual skills to complete successfully.
As an aside; I recently learned that the pupils at the local comprehensive are to wear clip-on ties, because they cannot be trusted to do their own to a sensible length, or they might start to strangle one another, or some such rubbish. Now that is definitely a backward development.
BPF
Richard:
Where does this innate ability to take a mildly perceptive observation and smother it under fallacy and poor diction come from? The choice of clothing in schools and among the youth in general is not a cause for a societal shift but a symptom or sign of it. You have made a Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy in putting such an emphasis on the supposed causal connection between modes of dress and behavior.
Your premise is really nothing more than an anecdote in thinly sociological language. Perhaps in future you should take the small components of your observation and speculate on something larger rather than dictate a law or theory from a pitiful scattering of facts.
I understand the field of communications, academic and professional, glosses over this stuffy sort of knowledge but it is by no means licence to abuse the notion of thinking with the same mentality and vigour that debases so many articles of clothing.
The real problem is the lack of substance! While I do support a proper decorum in the classroom, this post only further illustrates the point that, appearance is more important than actuality. There are bigger problems present in the educational system that a tweed jacket, tie and pipe will not fix.
For one, I did not place all of educations shortfalls on dress alone, but I do honestly believe there is a relationship between discipline and importance based on clothing. Otherwise, the president would address us in a t-shirt and jeans. In addition, Turling is correct to some degree about this being tongue and cheek. I do believe the lack of dress is some part of the problem, but not as large as I may have indicated in the post.
Apple Brown Betty and chocolate milk is a great after school snack
Richard -
Would you be able to post pictures of your father's school days? It would be so much more interesting than stock Life photos.
Although I do believe that children should dress appropriately for school, I also feel that it teaches them merely that - to be appropriately dressed for the occasion. Dress does not ensure manners or a sense of respect. For every entitled prep school kid kitted out in tie and blazer, there is a polite student in baggy jeans and a messy t-shirt.
Do you feed Mrs. Richard hormone enhanced chicken or beef? or is it centuries of selective breeding in the Semitic tradition?
Wonderful post, Richard. I think American students in government schools (i.e., "public" schools) dress like self-absorbed little sh*ts living in a pop-culture fantasyland. I agree with you, there is a clear relationship between sartorial standards and behaviour. Perhaps American students should spend less time worrying about how low they can wear their baggy denim trousers in imitation of their favourite rap "artiste," and more time being concerned with acquiring actual knowledge. Americans are happily marching arm-in-arm into Third World status, singing "Kumbayah" in unison, as any visit to a "public" school will demonstrate, so I'm not sure who useful your remarks will be. But then again, I'm a hopeless reactionary.
Tripp my good Sir,
You are a crude and vile human being.
the fall of education in America is no better symbolized than in richard's horrible command of the English grammar and punctuation, such as the quotation marks used in the headline of this post and the space before the exclamation point
haz anyone here noticed a difference lately in the tone of R's posts and the comments?
i think he may be having someone else write the comments.
maybe he dictates his response 2 his wife and has her write them, b/cuz she is the better write
I think that anyone you are forced to look at on a daily basis should dress well, although I'm not sure about the connection between education and dress. It probably has some influence, I'll grant. It's like the broken window theory. You see a broken window, you think that lawlessness abounds, and you act accordingly. You see someone of authority dressed poorly, you think there are no standards, so you don't live up to high standards.
Re: Alina's comment:
"...the rank of US Colleges and Universities are among the highest in comparison to international post-secondary institutions."
Ratings are based on such things as teacher:student ratio, number of publications per faculty member, number of books in the library, etc., and have nothing at all to do with the quality of education.
When a teacher dresses properly, he is showing his respect for his profession, for the subject he teaches, for his students, for the institution in which he works, and for himself.
When a student is required to dress properly, he is being told indirectly that a school is not a mall or an amusement park, and that certain forms of behavior are appropriate to certain places. Dress is a form of behavior, not just a form of personal adornment.
Richard,
Great post. I think you are onto something. I also think that it doesn't hurt if the Dad steps it up when it comes to dress-whether its dinner or church or even going to the store. I think that if a Dad dresses in WASP style it sets a message of discipline. Too often you see parents trying to outdo their kids by dressing in styles they should have given up years ago.
I will try to answer the myriad of questions --
I can't post any childhood pictures of my father due to the loss of them. Unfortuanately, his home burned to the ground while he was in college......I really do hate that !
Mrs. Richard eats both (chicken & beef)....that is why she has such nice breasts. Ha!
No, Mrs. Richard is not writing my dictations. I can write with some intelligence when I have time. But yes, she is a much better writer than yours truly. I know my punctuaion and grammar isn't always perfect, but I really don't care since this is hobby based and not work based. I think the random writings add to the mystique of the blog.
When I was in college at Berkeley in the early 1960s, professors tried to dress like what they imagined Oxford or Cambridge professors looked like and high school teachers tried to look like college teachers. Starting in our senior year, we began to wear ties and jackets (to look like grad students, who themselves were trying to look like professors) Up till then it was clean, ironed, button-down oxford cloth shirts (almost always blue), pressed chinos, and polished penny loafers. Even at the height of the hippy "revolution", Berkeley had a good number of shops selling what we called “Ivy League” clothing:
George J. Goode, Roos-Atkins, Grodin’s “Ram’s Head” shop among them. There was also an Ivy League shop whose name (in a senior moment) slips my mind-- on the lefthand-side of Telegraph Avenue, going away from the campus: It had a great range of regimental stripe and club figure ties. It also had a wide selection of wool challis ties (which have all but disappeared). I am now nearing retirement as a professor. My young colleagues teach tieless and jacketless—usually in jeans. When I go to have lunch in the faculty club, I’m usually one of a handful of professors wearing a necktie . Thankfully, the Deans and the President of the university do dress properly.
Well done on handling Tripp
Hello WASP 101, I do believe that you've got a point here. Many people do not realise how much they could influence others simply by changing your appearance.
People say 'don't judge a book by it's cover' but they do. The first impression is made within 30 seconds and once it has been made, it's virtually irreversible. Whether you are at the interview, presentation, fighting for a cause, making a sale, or asking for a rise, your success can depend on how you look, speak, and dress. In England, expensive public schools (they're private schools but we call public schools here) such as Harrow and Eton, they have strict school uniforms and they are famous for their sartorial reputation.
However, when I was a student at a private school, we all have to wear uniform and I remember most of my friends and I hated it. We felt that while the uniform may look smart, it limits the expression of your individuality.
I've been reading your blog for quite awhile and I think it's excellent.
Richard, I wish that you could visit Sewanee: The University of the South. Dressing for class is a tradition, not a requirement...but many observe it. Students also dress for things like football games. My husband teaches math every day in a necktie and academic gown (all professors wear gowns to teach).
Bow ties are very common here, as are seersucker suits in the summer. I think you would like it.
Regardless of the comments, there is a connection between how we dress, and the seriousness of which we take our subjects. To think otherwise, may be the reason our nation is so sloppy, both in dress and self respect. Keep it up Richard.
I still wear shirt and tie to teach, and during the winter a jacket. In March-May and August-October, I refuse, as South Texas is too bloody hot for suffering without cause.
It does sadden me as I walk across campus this time of year and see sweatpants and uggs, on every young lady.
I can't really complain about the half naked ones with their chicken and beef hormone advanced breast bouncing everywhere in the springtime though :)
Penn Guy: does Dick's wife attend your campus?
"Wasp 101" truely embodies American culture. What a better world we would have if more people (if not everyone) dressed in this civilized, elegant manner. I think many of the world's problems could be solved by saddle shoes alone (I own 15 pairs of them). Please continue this blog. It is wonderful. P.S. Where are the scottie dogs? They should not be forgotten!
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