A school in Colorado has altered its dress code to forbid the wearing of any patriotic clothing. According to the principal of Shaw Heights Middle School, Myla Shepard, it was a safety issue. From the CBS Channel 4 website:
What the article doesn't say is why the principal felt her only resort was to stifle the free speech of the students rather than identify and punish those guilty of creating a disruption.
So I called her.
Not unexpectedly, I didn't get to talk to her directly; instead I was referred to the community relations office, where I spoke to Deb Haviland.
I asked her about the policy banning patriotic clothing, and she quickly corrected me. The actual policy, called the Neutral Clothing Policy, bans clothing, banners, and flags expressing a political statement, all camoflage clothing, and all bandanas. It is a temporary policy meant to diffuse tensions at the ethnically diverse campus while the national debate over immigration policy continues.
According to Ms. Haviland, the school normally enjoys a very close relationship among the students, but that began to change as the kids saw media coverage of demonstrations in Denver and around the nation. Students began carrying and wearing flags not just out of pride, but also as a more divisive statement. She didn't go into particulars, but did say that more students bagan wearing clothing that made "sensitive political statements," that were not indicative of normal behaviors of the student body. The tension began to affect the learning environment, so some action had to be taken.
She said that initial attempts to reduce the tension by dealing with the behaviors directly were ineffective, as the behaviors continued to spread. In order to keep the school safe and focussed on learning, Principal Shepard eventually had to resort to banning the political clothing altogether.
I asked Ms. Haviland if she thought that the clothing ban would resolve the underlying tension in the student body, or merely push them back under the surface. She said that the purpose of the ban was to maintain a safe and secure learning environment while the school addressed those tensions through a variety of methods, including unity activities and mending processes.
She also stressed that the immigration debate and the resulting tension in the student body are being used as a learning opportunity, both from a legislative standpoint as well as a cultural one. Students are followng the legislative process, while also seeing first hand how the debate itself has social ramifications for them, even though they are just students.
I'm glad I called the school, because the full story is somewhat different from the reports we got from the Denver TV station. While I'm very leery about the suppression of political speech, especially when it goes as far as a dress code ban, it seems fairly clear that there was more going on here than simply waving the flag.
Having put 6 kids through Middle School myself, I'm well aware that kids at that age will seize any pretext to divide into cliques, and try to elevate themselves by putting another group down. When that happens, it doesn't matter what the pretext is; it needs to be addressed. What makes this situation more complicated is that the pretext used was our national pride. All of us, American, Mexican, or other, feel proud of our heritage, and rightly so. However, to use that pride as a pretext for diminishing another's heritage inescapably devalues our own.
We have to separate pride from pretext, and I believe that's what Principal Shepard did. I don't want my flag used to denigrate somebody else; it's a misuse of the flag and a corruption of what it stands for. Had Southerners stood up and defended the Confederate Flag in the 1960s when it was adopted by white supremecists as a symbol of their hate, it might have avoided the undeserved reputation it carries today. I won't see the same thing happen to the US flag.
Posted by Rich at April 5, 2006 1:23 PM | TrackBack