High School Follies: First Round of the Season

Curmie needs to write faster, because even if we’re talking about just high schools, it’s hard to keep up.  Anyway, here we go.  Note: a couple of more egregious cases aren’t included here; they’ll be treated separately… soon, I hope.

Not All Stupid Dress Codes Are about Girls.

The hair that signals the end of civilization.

Curmie has railed against school dress codes for years.  Most of the time, the stupid rules are aimed at girls, lest they be (gasp!) distracting to boys.  So: no visible shoulders, cleavage (or even collarbones), thighs…   Sometimes there’s a more general stupidity: no hair dye, no pro sports paraphernalia, no untucked shirts, that sort of stuff.  But there’s another option.  Years ago, the son of one of Curmie’s colleagues wanted to wear an earring.  Of course, the local school district would not countenance such an outrage; the lad wasn’t a girl, after all.  There was a battle at the school board level, and Curmie is pleased to report that the good guys won this one.

Ah, but that was long ago, even if not far away.  About three and a half hours from Curmie, there’s a place called Sanger, whose educational establishment has adopted one of the more repressive dress and grooming codes Curmie has seen.  In addition to the usual sexist injunctions against cleavage, spaghetti straps, skirts (or even shorts) shorter than fingertip length, yoga pants without a long blouse over the top, etc., for girls, there’s also all manner of paranoia directed at boys who aren’t short-haired and clean-shaven.

Curmie is pretty sure the last time he would have met all of Sanger’s criteria was when he had to shave and get a haircut for an acting role… in 1975.  Of course, Curmie would be okay at Sanger High now, even though he has a goatee and his hair is several inches too long, because it’s only students who are expected to “project a positive image for the student, school, and District.”  Staff aren’t expected to comply, presumably because they have a choice whether to be at that particular school, and would offer a monodigital salute on their way out the door if expected to comply with the silliness of the regulations.

Anyway, there’s a Change.org petition started by the mother of a boy who just likes to wear his hair long… and by “long,” I mean shorter than Curmie’s has been in several years.  I suppose it’s good news in a perverse sort of way that it’s not just girls running afoul of the defenders of 1950s styles (although Sanger has a history of punishing them, too, as evidenced by this Change.org petition from two years ago).

Of course, it’s also more than a little ironic (or hypocritical) that one strongly suspects that a good many members of the Board of Education, especially if they’re Curmie’s age or thereabouts, wore things in their high school days that they’d condemn now, and they’d have us believe that they turned out all right.  On second thought, maybe the standards really are appropriate, because those BoE folks are a taco short of the #4 special.

You’re Pledging Allegiance to WHAT?

In California (that part almost goes without saying), a teacher named Kristin Pitzen had her students pledge allegiance to a Pride flag.  Well, sort of.

Kristin Pitzen

According to her own social media post, Pitzen took down the American flag in her classroom during COVID (as if we aren’t still “during COVID”) because “it made [her] uncomfortable,” packed it away and hasn’t found it yet.  (It’s unclear how hard she looked.)  She had already instituted a policy whereby students could stand or not, say the words to the pledge or not, etc.

But when one student in her 3^rd period English (or ESL?) class questioned how they could face a flag that wasn’t there, Pitzen giggled (or at least she does in the re-telling) and pointed to a Pride flag.  In a previous post, she had mockingly stated “I pledge allegiance to the queers.”

Okay.  Three stipulations up front.

• There is nothing wrong with celebrating Pride Month, or with efforts to symbolize inclusiveness of virtually any variety.
• 2.  It’s easy to lose things.  Curmie has lost two very important documents somewhere in his office in the last couple of weeks.  You know: I put them somewhere “safe.”
• 3.  The Pledge of Allegiance has always been problematic.  I don’t owe allegiance to a flag, which is at most a symbol.  I can muster respect.  Allegiance?  No.  “Under God” is a troublesome phrase for a secular country, especially if we’re expected to swear obeisance.  And, of course, reciting the pledge starts as an exercise in rote memorization: Curmie “knew” the pledge long before understanding what is meant by “allegiance,” “republic,” “for which it stands,” or “indivisible.”  

Few people think about the words they’re saying, because they’ve been trained not to.  And the idea of demanding such a declaration runs counter to all the best things about this country. 

All that said… What the Serious F*ck?  This isn’t cute or funny or whatever the hell Ms. Pitzen thinks it is.  It’s just… well, stupid.

They Played WHO???

This one starts weird and keeps getting weirder.  The last weekend in August, ESPN aired, on its main channel (!), a high school football game between IMG Academy and Bishop Sycamore. 

The score isn't the only ugly thing here.

Exactly how Bishop Sycamore, a school no one has heard of (and for good reason: see below) was deemed worthy of national coverage for a game against a sports powerhouse is unclear, although clearly officials at BS (appropriate initials) lied, and neither ESPN nor Paragon Marketing, which scheduled the event, could be bothered to do a little basic fact-checking.

Um… if there’s no school at the address listed and no curriculum listed on the website, that might be a clue.  Of course, that would take… hell… maybe 15 seconds to check.  We can’t expect people engaged in scheduling events on a major television network to do that kind of intensive research, now can we?

But the story is just getting started.  Bishop Sycamore had played another game two nights earlier, and a lot of its athletes play both offense and defense, creating a level of fatigue that was potentially dangerous, even if the two teams were otherwise evenly matched, which, of course, they weren’t.  And a number of them had apparently already suited up for junior college games.  And there is considerable debate as to whether Bishop Sycamore is actually a school at all.

And it gets weirder.  A former Assistant Director of Officiating and Sport Management at the Ohio High School Athletics Association went public with an accusation that the whole business was a “scam.”  Bishop Sycamore is not recognized by the Ohio Department of Education for the 2021-22 academic year, although they were last year as a “non-chartered, non-tax supported school.”  And the new football coach proclaimed that Bishop Sycamore is “not a school,” but rather a “post-grad football academy.”  Not a very good one, apparently.

The problem, you see, was “a mistake on paperwork.”  Catchy euphemism for shameless mendacity, don’t you think?  Oh, and they allegedly passed over $3500 in bad checks to the hotel where they stayed the weekend of the IMG game.  Indeed, there’s a laundry list of offenses linked to the former coach (the one who coached the IMG game), and a similar list of promises to prospective… erm… players which no one had either the ability or the intention to keep.  Rather, they preyed on mediocre recent grads who weren’t offered D-1 scholarships, probably for very good reason.

Of course, IMG is also pretty much a scam, too, but that’s a rant for another day.  And, of course, Paragon Marketing richly deserves to be out of business.  And ESPN owes literally every sports fan a profound apology.  (Well, they do for a lot of reasons, but this one has got to be at the top of the list.)

Sigh.

They cancelled WHAT?

This event never happened.

Students at Eastlake High School in Sammamish, WA, wanted to recognize the anniversary of 9/11 with a themed event with student attending the football game wearing red, white, and blue clothing.  Okay, maybe it’s a little on the faux Patriotic (capital letter fully intentional) side, coming as it does from students who weren’t even born at the time of the event being commemorated.  What it isn’t, is offensive.  Not in actuality, not in potentia.

But don’t tell that to the school’s administrators, or their “leadership teachers,” whatever the hell that term means. Actually, do tell them, because they’re individually and collectively too stupid to understand that.  What passes for a brain trust at Eastlake High decided, quoting both principal Chris Bede and assistant principal Darcie Breynaert (how convenient that they had, word for word, the same inane response to students’ and parents’ complaints), “I know tomorrow is 9/11 and understand the sacrifice and values our flag represents, but I think they just did not want to unintentionally cause offense to some who see it differently.”

Who, exactly, is likely to take offense at commemorating a significant event in recent American history?  What is even potentially offensive about wearing red, white, and blue?  Does the apparent reference to the football opponent being a majority-minority school have anything to do with the decision?  If so, are they presuming that black and Latinx students are too dim-witted to know that it’s the weekend of the 20^th anniversary of 9/11?  Are they saying that black and Latinx students aren’t really Americans?  Or how, exactly, does all this work?

The saga goes on and on, with EHS officials digging themselves into deeper holes with each announcement.  What isn’t clear is why the students didn’t simply, oh-so-coincidentally, wear whatever the hell they wanted to the game.  The only plausible explanation is that the decision to abandon the “themed” wearing of red, white, and blue was presented to the students, intentionally or otherwise, as a prohibition against sporting those colors at all, and the students, knowing what morons their administration are, might have feared punishment.

Curmie, ever the theatre historian, is reminded of the “Bottle Riot” in Dublin in 1822.  The details of the case would take too long to explain here, but the judge in resulting trial set the standards for well over another century of theatre disturbances: you can boo if you want to, and you can even go to the theatre with the express intention of booing, but if you gather your friends together with the intention of booing, that’s conspiracy.  I’d think the same concepts would be at play in terms of (gasp!) wearing patriotic colors.