notsmartmark
Member
My point wasn't about treatment; it was about expectations, the expectations that shape our children's lives. Dress requirements can, and do, help shape those expectations. It's not that I believe they are wrong; they just need to be carefully entered into. My mom, through cultural expectations, which included expectations of dress, was shaped to dress and act like a homemaker.
Those same expectations, which continued to include dress expectations, encouraged women of my age that nursing and teaching were the job opportunities available to them. They could enter a professional world, as long as it was in the helping arts. We have just recently entered an age in which opportunities offered to women have exploded.
But still, girls are barely accessing the fields of math and science. Why? It is because of the expectations our culture places on them. Our words influence them, and our expectations influence them, including the way that we dress our daughters.
Standards of dress are critically important in our schools. Those standards can set the expectation that school is a place to learn, and they help shape who we will become. They are needed; they just need to be entered into carefully. It is interesting that the students raised the concern about different expectations. They may not fully understand the reasons, but that isn't heir job; it is the job of the adults who support them.
Those same expectations, which continued to include dress expectations, encouraged women of my age that nursing and teaching were the job opportunities available to them. They could enter a professional world, as long as it was in the helping arts. We have just recently entered an age in which opportunities offered to women have exploded.
But still, girls are barely accessing the fields of math and science. Why? It is because of the expectations our culture places on them. Our words influence them, and our expectations influence them, including the way that we dress our daughters.
Standards of dress are critically important in our schools. Those standards can set the expectation that school is a place to learn, and they help shape who we will become. They are needed; they just need to be entered into carefully. It is interesting that the students raised the concern about different expectations. They may not fully understand the reasons, but that isn't heir job; it is the job of the adults who support them.
