Learn about School Uniform Policies, Benefits of School Uniforms, Dress Codes, Culture, Sexual and Social Politics, Fashion and Slumming it on the Educational CyberPlayGround™.
Read about school uniforms: arguments pro and con, implementation issues, and benefits and disadvantages. Why have School Uniforms and Dress Codes?
Culture: Fashion, Morals, & Slumming it.
Low Class vs. High Class. Why do the runways of Europe and the US take the low class street culture for Haute Couture?
school dress code | school uniform
Do the kids with:
- Spiked hair know that's the institutional look from leaving a mental ward?
- Baggy, falling down pants know that's the look of prison uniforms?
- "Regional clothing from our locale" including "bling bling ice ice, grills" and "hoochie hoops."
- Manual on School Uniforms suggestions and descriptions of model programs
- ERIC Digest 117- Student Dress Codes information related to school uniforms
- NAESP conducted a survey on school Uniforms
- Source In 1997, 3% all public schools required school uniforms; three years later, the level topped 12%, according to the U.S. Department of Education. The department also found that 47% of public schools enforced a strict dress code.
The federal government takes a new look at the issue in 2006. Proponents say dress codes and school uniforms increase school safety by eliminating gang-related clothing and helping aid in the recognition of nonstudents on campus. Other potential benefits cited include better student behavior, more resistance to peer pressure and improved emphasis on academics. - About one in four public elementary schools and one in eight public middle and high schools in the USA have policies dictating what a student wears to school, says David Brunsma, a sociologist who wrote Uniforms in Public Schools: A Decade of Research and Debate in 2005.
- If wearing a school uniform brings about behavioral changes and enhanced academic achievement, should we require that teachers and principals also wear the same uniform? Or, does the magic of a uniform only work for students?
- A study of uniform policies at public schools around Nashville says it simply doesn't work. Students will always find ways to distinguish themselves. Students in "standard school attire," were just as likely
to get suspended as their regular-clothed peers. - Sagging pants, a style popularized in the early 1990s by hip-hop artists, are becoming a criminal offense in a growing number of communities. Starting in Louisiana, an intensifying push by lawmakers has determined pants worn low enough to expose underwear poses a threat to the public, and they have enacted indecency ordinances to stop it. Since June 11, sagging pants have been against the law in Delcambre, La., a town of 2,231 that is 80 miles southwest of Baton Rouge. The style carries a fine of as much as $500 or up to a six-month sentence"We used to wear long hair, but I don't think our trends were ever as bad as sagging," said Mayor Carol Broussard. An ordinance in Mansfield, a town of 5,496 near Shreveport, subjects offenders to a fine (as much as $150 plus court costs) or jail time (up to 15 days). Police Chief Don English said the law, which takes effect Sept. 15, will set a good civic image. Behind the indecency laws may be the real issue -- the hip-hop style itself, which critics say is worn as a badge of delinquency, with its distinctive walk conveying thuggish swagger and a disrespect for authority. Also at work is the larger issue of freedom of expression and the questions raised when fashion moves from being merely objectionable to illegal. Sagging began in prison, where oversized uniforms were issued without belts to prevent suicide and their use as weapons. The style spread through rappers and music videos, from the ghetto to the suburbs and around the world. Following a pattern of past fashion bans, the sagging prohibitions are seen by some as racially motivated because the wearers are young, predominantly African-American men. Yet, this legislation has been proposed largely by African-American officials.http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/fashion/30baggy.html
Commercializing, marketing, merchandising the poor is historically rooted in ideas about sex and morals from Victorian England.
Background Story: Poverty in Victorian England.
His book is "Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London."
Chapter from "Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London" Seth Koven
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/i7850.html and
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/i7850.pdf
<snip>
"The intimate, turbulent, and often surprising relationship between benevolence and sex, rich and poor, in Victorian London is my subject. I came to this topic circuitously through the history of elite men's and women's philanthropic endeavors to bring "sweetness and light" to the dark spaces and dirty inhabitants of the metropolis. As I immersed myself deeply in the sources, I found it impossible to keep sex, sexual desire, and sexuality out of their story. So what began as an inquiry into class-bridging institutions and social welfare programs took on a life of its own, propelled by several insights. First, it became clear that debates about "social" questions such as homelessness, social hygiene, childhood poverty, and women's work were often sparked by and tapped into anxieties about sex, sexuality, and gender roles. To understand how elite men and women thought about the poor required me to reckon with how they thought about sex, gender, and themselves. Second, I discovered that the widely shared imperative among well-to-do men and women to traverse class boundaries and befriend their outcast brothers and sisters in the slums was somehow bound up in their insistent eroticization of poverty and their quest to understand their own sexual subjectivities. But how and why were these movements, both literal and imaginative, connected? And what were the consequences of such linkages for the histories of class, gender, sexuality, and welfare? An inquiry into the set of social practices and relations that Britons called slumming promised a means to untangle and knit together in a new way the history of sexual and social politics. Once I started looking for slumming, it was hard not to find it everywhere." </snip>
Highbrow, Lowbrow, or Nobrow?
Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing, the Marketing of Culture
"It used to be that reading poetry, going to the opera, or attending art galleries meant you were part of the cultural elite. Watching television and mainstream movies, and listening to top 40 hits was considered more common, a kind of cultural slumming. In America, where equality is the ideal, people don't like to talk about class distinctions, but they love to show it. But lately, it's getting harder to distinguish one from the other as professional wrestlers become governors, Michael Graves makes high priced teapots for Target, and Metallica dabbles in symphonic music. Join Michael Krasny and guests as they take a look at the changes in culture and class: High-brow, Low-brow or No-brow?"
Is Bill Cosby Right or Is the Black Middle Class Out of Touch? May 3, 2005
A year ago, Bill Cosby set off a national debate in a speech to the NAACP where he criticized poor blacks in sometimes harsh language. Cosby emphasized personal responsibility, or the lack of it. In a new book, Michael Eric Dyson describes Cosby's remarks as a vicious attack on the most vulnerable among us. "Do you view Bill Cosby as a race traitor?" journalist Paula Zahn bluntly asked me on her nighttime television show.
July 7, 2004 Cosby lambasted their language, decried their decorum and panned their parenting. No wonder Bill's Cosby's remarks about African Americans have created a stir. Were his words a welcome wake-up call? Or a misguided attack? Bill Cosby joins NPR's Lynn Neary to discuss Controversial Comments Plus, hear how teachers are using Cosby's words in the classroom.
Critics Say L.A. Homeless Shelter Is Too Posh
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3D4645822
May 10, 2005 Los Angeles' newest homeless center has drawn unexpected criticism for its gymnasium, hair salon and other amenities. Luke Burbank spent the night there to see what the $17 million Midnight Mission is really like.
Crippled by Their Culture
Crippled by Their Culture
Mr. Sowell, the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution 4/17/05 (his comments start about 1/2 way through the program)
"For most of the history of this country, differences between the black and the white population -- whether in income, IQ, crime rates, or whatever -- have been attributed to either race or racism. For much of the first half of the 20th century, these differences were attributed to race -- that is, to an assumption that blacks just did not have it in their genes to do as well as white people. The tide began to turn in the second half of the 20th century, when the assumption developed that black-white differences were due to racism on the part of whites.
Three decades of my own research lead me to believe that neither of those explanations will stand up under scrutiny of the facts. As one small example, a study published last year indicated that most of the black alumni of Harvard were from either the West Indies or Africa, or were the children of West Indian or African immigrants. These people are the same race as American blacks, who greatly outnumber either or both.
If this disparity is not due to race, it is equally hard to explain by racism. To a racist, one black is pretty much the same as another. But, even if a racist somehow let his racism stop at the water's edge, how could he tell which student was the son or daughter of someone born in the West Indies or in Africa, especially since their American-born offspring probably do not even have a foreign accent?
What then could explain such large disparities in demographic "representation" among these three groups of blacks? Perhaps they have different patterns of behavior and different cultures and values behind their behavior.
There have always been large disparities, even within the native black population of the U.S. Those blacks whose ancestors were "free persons of color" in 1850 have fared far better in income, occupation, and family stability than those blacks whose ancestors were freed in the next decade by Abraham Lincoln.
What is not nearly as widely known is that there were also very large disparities within the white population of the pre-Civil War South and the white population of the Northern states. Although Southern whites were only about one-third of the white population of the U.S., an absolute majority of all the illiterate whites in the country were in the South.
The North had four times as many schools as the South, attended by more than four times as many students.
Children in Massachusetts spent more than twice as many years in school as children in Virginia. Such disparities obviously produce other disparities. Northern newspapers had more than four times the circulation of Southern newspapers. Only 8% of the patents issued in 1851 went to Southerners. Even though agriculture was the principal economic activity of the antebellum South at the time, the vast majority of the patents for agricultural inventions went to Northerners. Even the cotton gin was invented by a Northerner.
Disparities between Southern whites and Northern whites extended across the board from rates of violence to rates of illegitimacy. American writers from both the antebellum South and the North commented on the great differences between the white people in the two regions. So did famed French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville.
None of these disparities can be attributed to either race or racism.
Many contemporary observers attributed these differences to the existence of slavery in the South, as many in later times would likewise attribute both the difference between Northern and Southern whites, and between blacks and whites nationwide, to slavery. But slavery doesn't stand up under scrutiny of historical facts any better than race or racism as explanations of North-South differences or black-white differences. The people who settled in the South came from different regions of Britain than the people who settled in the North -- and they differed as radically on the other side of the Atlantic as they did here -- that is, before they had ever seen a black slave.
Slavery also cannot explain the difference between American blacks and West Indian blacks living in the United States because the ancestors of both were enslaved. When race, racism, and slavery all fail the empirical test, what is left?
CULTURE IS LEFT
The culture of the people who were called "rednecks" and "crackers" before they ever got on the boats to cross the Atlantic was a culture that produced far lower levels of intellectual and economic achievement, as well as far higher levels of violence and sexual promiscuity.
Crackers By the 1760s the English, both at home and in colonial America, were applying the term (cracker) to Scots-Irish settlers of the southern backcountry in southern Georgia and northern Florida.
Read and Learn about the amazing Origin of the words KU KLUX KLAN, CRACKER, and JIM CROW
A Cracker is a Creagaire: a hard, misely person.
That culture had its own way of talking, not only in the pronunciation of particular words but also in a loud, dramatic style of oratory with vivid imagery, repetitive phrases and repetitive cadences.{source} SEE MUSIC BELOW
Although that style originated on the other side of the Atlantic in centuries past, it became for generations the style of both religious oratory and political oratory among Southern whites and among Southern blacks -- not only in the South but in the Northern ghettos in which Southern blacks settled. It was a style used by Southern white politicians in the era of Jim Crow and later by black civil rights leaders fighting Jim Crow. Hear Martin Luther King's famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 was a classic example of that style and you can hear it.
While a third of the white population of the U.S. lived within the redneck culture, more than 90% of the black population did. Although that culture eroded away over the generations, it did so at different rates in different places and among different people. It eroded away much faster in Britain than in the U.S. and somewhat faster among Southern whites than among Southern blacks, who had fewer opportunities for education or for the rewards that came with escape from that counterproductive culture.
Nevertheless the process took a long time. As late as the First World War, white soldiers from Georgia, Arkansas, Kentucky and Mississippi scored lower on mental tests than black soldiers from Ohio, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania. Again, neither race nor racism can explain that -- and neither can slavery.
The redneck culture proved to be a major handicap for both whites and blacks who absorbed it.
Today, the last remnants of that culture can still be found in the worst of the black ghettos, whether in the North or the South, for the ghettos of the North were settled by blacks from the South. The counterproductive and self-destructive culture of black rednecks in today's ghettos is regarded by many as the only "authentic" black culture -- and, for that reason, something not to be tampered with. Their talk, their attitudes, and their behavior are regarded as sacrosanct.
The people who take this view may think of themselves as friends of blacks. But they are the kinds of friends who can do more harm than enemies."
CULTURE OF HONOR
Teachers,
Dress Code, Evolutionary Psychology, Culture of Honor, Reputation
An Evolutionary Psychological Perspective on Cultures of Honor
Abstract: A key element of cultures of honor is that men in these cultures are prepared to protect with violence the reputation for strength and toughness. Such cultures are likely to develop where (1) a man's resources can be thieved in full by other men and (2) the governing body is weak and thus cannot prevent or punish theft. Historically a herding culture operating outside of formal government, the southern United States has a rich culture of honor. In this article, I briefly review research conducted by Nisbett, Cohen, and colleagues on the southern culture of honor. I then present several important but unanswered questions about the development and maintenance of the southern culture of honor. I next argue that current models of the development and maintenance of cultures of honor and violence can be informed by an evolutionary psychological perspective. I conclude with a tentative evolutionary psychological analysis of the development and maintenance of the southern culture of honor.
Bryan Palmer explains the connections between charivari, rough music and forerunners of the KKK.
PURPLE MOUNTAINS MAJESTY AND AMBER WAVES OF GRAIN
The Scots - Irish brought the fight
Whiskey Rebellion
The Scot's/Irish background of many of the settler's may have led to their apparent lack of respect for authority.
Western Pennsylvania had a history of wanting to be separate. As early as 1775 the Transylvanians petitioned the Continental Congress to be recognized as the fourteenth colony. In 1776 the people in the region claimed by both Pennsylvania and Virginia, announced that they were the new state of Westsylvania. Learn about the Paxton Boys
Whiskey (Bourbon whiskey) is an American native spirit, with a history steeped in the cultures of the earliest settlers. This unique American product was involved in the history of the first use of armed force by the new post-Revolution United States of America.
Although whiskey was produced throughout the colonies (George Washington was among the noted whiskey producers of the time), the Scotch-Irish settlers of western Pennsylvania are where bourbon roots began, and where rebellion to the United States first was occurred. [1]
Indians led by the British raided the Pennsylvania areas west of the mountains. The United States sent two major military expeditions against the eastern Indians. The first, in 1790, was led by General Josiah Harmer and the second, in 1791, was led by General Arthur St. Clair. Both expeditions were defeated by the Indians! It wasn't until 1794 that General Anthony Wayne defeated the British at Fallen Timbers and the British actually withdrew from the region, giving up on any hope of claim to the areas west of the mountains. To pay for the military activity against the Indians and British in the western counties, the federal government decided to put an additional tariff on the sale of whiskey at the source.
The settlers of Western Pennsylvania refused to pay, and broke out in armed rebellion in Pennsylvania. At some times, the rebellion had a force of seven thousand armed militia troops. To restore order to the ensuing "Whiskey Rebellion", Washington sent the Continental Army. The 13,000 federal troops sent to the western Pennsylvania area was the first test of the power of the new government.
Although the army was successful in temporarily ending the rebellion the political problem remained. To avoid further troubles with the tough and stubborn Scotch-Irish settlers, and break up their center of resistance to taxation, Washington made a settlement with them, giving incentives for those who would move to western Virginia.
Although it was Washington who first offered incentives, it was the then Governor of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, who was offering offered pioneers sixty acres of land in Kentucky (at that time a western part of Virginia). To gain the land all the settler had to do was build a permanent structure and raise "native corn". No family could eat sixty acres worth of corn a year and it was too perishable and bulky to transport for sale. The Scotch-Irish in Pennsylvania knew well how to make whiskey, and they used the rye of Pennsylvania to make the beverage. By switching the base of the beverage to corn, the problem of getting rid of a bulky grain that was too expensive to ship evaporated.
This corn based whiskey, which was a clear distillate, would become "bourbon" only after two coincidentally related events happened. The French had assisted in the War of Independence against the British. In acknowledgment of this, French names were subsequently used for new settlements or counties. In 1780, in the Western part of Virginia, the then huge county of Kentucky, was subdivided, in 1780 and again in 1786. One of these subdivisions was named Bourbon County, after the French Royal House.
Being on the Ohio River, the town of Marysville, Bourbon County, Kentucky, became a primary shipping port. Bourbon County thus became associated with the shipping of Whiskey. The name of the spirit became synonymous because of this location and the enterprise of the Reverend Elijah Craig from Bourbon County. He used old barrels to transport his whiskey to market in New Orleans. To get rid of the residue of previous contents of the old barrels, he charred the barrels before filling them. As his clear corn based whiskey made the long trip to market, it "mellowed" and took on a light caramel color from the charred oak. Being from Bourbon County Rev. Craig started calling his mellowed whiskey "Bourbon". His whiskey became sought after more than the "white lightening" of the other producers. Soon all whiskey producers were claiming they also had "Bourbon", and any corn whiskey, that had aged some in charred barrels, shipped from Bourbon County was called Bourbon.
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BASTARDS OF THE PARTY Raised in the Athens Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, Cle "Bone" Sloan was four years old when his father died, and 12 when he became a member of the Bloods. Now an inactive member of the notorious gang, Sloan looks back at the history of black gangs (dress codes and other codes) in his city and makes a powerful call for change in modern gang culture with his insightful documentary, Sloan’s transition out of that culture is summed up when he says it wasn’t a ‘lifestyle’ but a “deathstyle.” Sloan’s research tells the history of LA gangs back to 1936.
Dress Codes of Mexican Gangs
In the early 1930’s and 1940’s the fashionable Zoot Suits were inherited from a man named Mickey Garcia. The Zoot Suit or the Pachuco look is composed of a felt hat with a long feather in it called a “tapa” or “tanda”. The shirt was creased and called a “lisa”. A “carlango” or long, loose fitting coat was used. The shoes, known as “calcos”, were French toe style or Stacey Adams brand and were constantly shined. To perfect the style a long chain was attached to a belt loop that hung past the knees and into the side pocket of the pants (Valdez, 2000).
Culture of Celebrity - "culture" no longer, for that whole congeries of institutions, relations, kinship patterns, linguistic forms, and the rest for which the early anthropologists meant it to stand. "The celebrity, is a person who is well-known for his well-knownness"
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LINGUISTICS
IRISH AMERICAN VERNACULAR ENGLISH
Karen Ellis Guest Lecturer Honoring the work of Scholar Peter Tamony and The Sanas, the Etymology of JAZZ
- The Big "Butter an' Eggman," The King of Teas (Jass, Heat), & The Sacred Secret Tongue of the Saol Luim (Slum, World of Poverty)
- Sanas of Buccaneer, Racket, Fluke, Lulu, and the KKK
DIALECT SPEAKERS AND LINGUISTICS
Find Resources for African American Black Vernacular, Creole, Patois, A pidgin is a new language which develops in situations where speakers of different languages need to communicate but don't share a common language.
WHY EBONICS IS A LANGUAGE
Stigmatized and Standardized Varieties in the Classroom: Interference or Separation? What is among the most serious social problems that our country faces? The failure of inner-city schools to teach children to read.
MUSIC
DO YOU KNOW YOUR STATE SONG?
Crackers, Jim Crow and Jimmy Crack Corn are all Irish American Vernacular English. "Jim Crow" became part of the language, becoming the name for racist laws and attitudes used to oppress blacks in the Southern United States in the 19th and 20th Centuries. About Minstrel Shows.
Many of the crackers were Scots-Irish Protestants who had left Ireland in the 18th century. Although more than a small percentage were Irish Catholics, as well, who ultimately lost their Catholicism in the pre-Revolutionary period when Catholic Churches were illegal in the American colonies as well as England and the colony of Ireland. "There will be Scots who are uncomfortable with the relationship and the involvement in the slave trade. But the Scots are like anyone, and there were many who were abolitionists and who set up schools for black children after emancipation."
Gaelic Psalm Singing Root of Black Gospel Music - Presenting the Line / Line Singing / Call & Response / Congregational Singing by Whites, Blacks, & Scottish Highlanders Connection
FROM HOME LANGUAGE TO THE STANDARD
Why don't people vote? 50% of all Americans over 65 years old are functionally illiterate. 60% of the Urban School Children do not graduate High School of the 40% that do they are only reading at 4th grade level. Find out more about literacy and approaches to improving it. Learn how to successfully bridge from the Dialect Speakers' home language to the Standard.
WHY IS ENGLISH SO HARD TO LEARN?
Integrate literacy (Language Arts), the arts (music) and technology into the classroom using Interdisciplinary, thematic, collaborative Online Curriculum, Readability Tools and Resources about American Dialects.
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- Sync Sense, Social Rhythm Research Experts
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- Motivation, Play, Culturally Relevant Content
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K12 TESTING, EVALUATION, ASSESSMENT, TESTING state standards, drop out rates, Retention