End Secondary School

I don't think there should be secondary school anymore.

Why would someone have secondary school?  Well, to teach the students everything they would need in life.  Really.  That sounds impossible.  Maybe we endeavor to teach citizens the things that make them fit the definition of educated.  However, schools largely don't do that.  Schools probably never did, or how many students can pass the same calculus exams that proved mastery one month later?  

And what does it take to teach the students these things?  It takes motivated students and only barely competent teachers.  It takes supportive parents who encourage and partner with students and teachers.  Over the decades the motivation of students has dropped, the buy in of the parents has flopped, and the competency of the teachers has gone up.  These statements are addressing averages.

Now there are teachers who don't do much.  They are at these failure factories in inner cities and they are working with too many students who don't care.  They lost the battle and their job is to shift the blame and cover the truth.  If America doesn't know, schools in inner cities are broken.  

But where the battle to educate is still being waged, public schools expected less and less and less.  In some academic game of high jump the children will keep adjusting to the lowered bar until they are refusing to jump centimeters.  They have and they do play limbo until they simply won't engage the bar.  School isn't teaching the minimum basic skills because there is no reason for the students to learn.  

So just end secondary school requirements.  Stop sending millions of kids who don't want to go to school to learn something they don't want to learn.  If kids want to go to middle school or high school or if their parents are highly motivated for them to go then they can go.  Then teachers wouldn't be spending out-sized time trying to make oppositional defiant teens pass arbitrary requirements.  Teachers can focus on the students who WANT to be there.  Students can get what they need.  The bills would be cut.  The arbitrary nature of grades can be amended up instead of down for the first time in decades.  

Just change schools to Primary (K-3rd) and Senior (4th-6th) and finally Remedial (7th).  In primary students will spend a lot of their time in the same way they do now.  However, maybe with more emphasis put on fewer grade levels there can be more teachers per student.  One teacher teaching 10-15...with a helper.  Sounds great! Student citizens need only to gain powers of reading, writing, and arithmetic.

It's all they need.  To read with good vocabulary and understanding for simple facts.  The idea that all 16 year olds can engage with Chaucer, Shakespeare, or Dickens is ludacris.  As surely as the idea that all 50 year olds can.  To do basic math well enough to mentally balance a checkbook.  To write opinions and feelings.  The list of requirements isn't large, and yet elementary schools are pushing some algebraic ideas into the lower levels so they'll be ready for them in secondary school.  That's crazy. Members of our society don't lament thirty year olds who can't find a hypotenuse, but America rightly cringes when we hear of high school grads who cannot read and write at a third grade level.  Forget the first problem and attack the second.  

Senior School (4th thru 6th) would be the time for high-stakes, standardized testing.  Students would need to prove their mastery of all ESSENTIAL (meaning a lot of them aren't essential) knowledge and skills.  Just as today this should be based on teachers grades, formative assessments, and standardized testing.  State testing would continue and increase in these early grades as children are proving mastery and schools are graded for their capability.  This makes politicians and test-writer lobbyists happy.

7th Grade would be for the ones who couldn't get through.  And as their peers move on they would be given more focus and attention.  Diagnosticians could give extra time.  Master teachers could be employed.  Summer school could be elongated.  The light at the end of the tunnel could be shown to them.  Once they get it they...

If a student doesn't choose to continue traditional, but re envisioned secondary school.  Send them to get a job.  They could be making their own money, helping their families, or a bit of both.  In my class I tell my kids that if they don't get through high school they'll probably only work menial jobs.  But some kids don't find this threatening.  Let's let them work at Domino's pizza, or Starbucks, or a grocery store, or where ever, for half of minimum wage.  Simply tie a juvenile minimum wage to the federal minimum wage.  Now a 12 or 13 year old kid can work for five years instead of secondary school. Kids can become apprentice construction workers, plumbers, daycare, animal groomers, or anything else  They can make more than minimum wage if their employers find them valuable.  

I can envision assistant managers taking over a fast food restaurant when they turn 18 because they've been working there 6 years.  General Manager may not happen until they go to business classes for a year or two, but that's way better than starting that trajectory at age 19.  

Plus, I'm tired of college graduates working at Starbucks.  Lets let them forgo Harvard and start butchering names right away.

Maybe you also don't let them vote until they pass their school.  I know sounds racially charged because it used to be, but I like the idea of the school graduation earning something.  How about you can't get a job until you graduate 6th grade and you can't vote until you can read the candidates positions.  Maybe people will care more about their vote if they all had to earn it.

Maybe they would care more about school if it earned them something.       

All I want for Christmas, I didn't get.

Brethren,

                Did you get what you wanted for Christmas?

Have you ever noticed that there aren’t a lot of stories in the Bible about people who couldn’t perform miracles, who didn’t get they wanted?  Yes, I know there’s that time when Jesus couldn’t do any miracles, it says because the people had no faith in Mark 6, but even there he still put his hands on some people and healed them.  I know there was that time when Peter couldn’t walk on water but then he could with Jesus.  There was that time that the disciples couldn’t drive out a demon, but Jesus could with prayer.    Do you remember that time that Moses lifted his staff and walked into the Red Sea and got wet (I made that up.  It’s not in the Bible.)?

How about that time you prayed to God for something in his name and it didn’t happen even if it wouldn’t have been miraculous, like praying for someone you love to turn back to the Lord.  Or maybe you’ve prayed that God might help someone to forgive you, and they didn’t.  In the Bible, I wish God could have sprinkled a couple of stories about not getting what we wanted when we asked for it.  

Turns out that in his infinite wisdom he did.

Paul tells us that all of Creation is waiting for the sons of God to be revealed, and it still is presumably.  Paul also longed to see a bunch of people and wasn’t able to before the end.  Imagine Moses, this tired old fossil, walking up a mountain to see a land flowing with milk and honey, a Promised Land, that he wasn’t able to see after 40 years of anticipation.  You think he plead for God to change his mind?  How does it feel that God didn’t give you what you really wanted now?  That car, health insurance, life without a softball-sized tumor, life without divorce, life with both parents:  Do you think your hurts and hang-ups, addictions and heartaches can stand up to Moses’?

How about this one?  God, having made all things, made you in his image.  He created you to be like him and he is wild about you.  He thinks you are fantasmic.  He loves you with an everlasting love.  He loves each and every hair on your head.  Yeah, he got what he really wanted. 

But think of all those people on the ‘naughty list.’  God loves them too and a lot of them aren’t going to be under the Christmas tree.  Millions won’t make it into his stocking.  All he wants for Christmas is us yet the world is full of the faithless and the enemies of God who he never really thought of as enemies.  Those far from God, ‘WON’T be home for Christmas.’  When you think about what you didn’t get that you really wanted, think about the yearning God has for the sinner.  See if you can wrap one up for him next Christmas.     

When you can't see God he's still there

Brethren, my son Ender is cute as a button.  He’s had my heart ever since he got yanked into the world. And he likes me too.  He always has big smiles for me.  He gives me really nice dry burps faster than anyone else.  He likes our ceiling fan more than me, but I’m no chopped liver, according to him. 

Ender and I spend a lot of time together.  His mom works part-time and I’m home for the summer since I’m a school teacher; so there are five hours a day that I get to play Mr. Mom.  We really like our time together.   

His nap is usually after we’re back from a long walk and I’ve fed him, burped him, changed him, and worked him out with tummy time and a stuffed bee he likes to abuse.  It usually happens in his room.  I know from experience the nap is going to be between 30 and 45 minutes.  

This is my time.  I really like to cut loose right about now because I know the grind is going to continue in just a bit so…  I wash his bottles and pacifiers, make him a pitcher of formula, wash his clothes sometimes, start to prepare lunch, put a bottle in the warmer, tiptoe everywhere, text my wife things about the morning since she tracks his meals and diaper changes, and sometimes get ready to go on an errand with him.  Sometime during this ‘me time,’ he starts crying. 

He wakes up alone and scared so he cries out.  You know if he really thought about what I was doing he probably would think I was taking ‘me time.’  He probably thinks I’m watching soap operas, doing my nails, or weight lifting.  ‘Dad is probably reading some esoteric history tome.’ (I love personifying my son (I know it’s not really personifying because he IS a person.).) 

So I’ve noticed that my son doesn’t realize that when I’m not with him I’m still taking care of him.  You know this, even when you’re at work you’re taking care of your kids, aren’t you?  Rent isn’t going to pay itself, right?  Sometimes the most important things we do to take care of our children is stuff they can’t see us doing. 

Sometimes our heavenly father seems to be very far from us.  We are in the desert and he is nowhere to be found.  We are taking up our crosses and following after him and he is forsaking us.  We’re going through personal tragedies like dead loved ones or divorce or unemployment and God has left us in our crib and shut the door.

But God is the Father and even when he isn’t taking care of you he IS taking care of you.  He is filling your life with providence even when he feels far away.  He is making sure that all things work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

Get the bad stuff out

Brethren, get ready for an article about bowel movements.

The late Lois Williams Murphy’s most recent great grandchild was born after her death and the two, barring any eschatological or afterlife theological issues, were able to spend a little time getting to know each other in heaven before I got to meet my four-month old.  Ender is my first baby but I have had a lot of nieces and nephews.  The differences between your kids and sibling’s kids are legion.  One of the more surprising ones was that I like to change Ender’s diaper and I feared and loathed changing any of the other rascals related to me. 

‘Wait…you mean you’re happy to do it because you love him?’  No.  I like to change his poopy pants.  My little dude has difficulty going number two on a regular basis and so when he does I react as if I’ve won the lottery.  I throw a party all by myself.  My kid must think it’s very strange.  Daddy comes in and takes care of my business and starts whooping and hollering. 

So Uncle Drew doesn’t like to handle the poo but Daddy is happy to get in there and unload my kid’s load.  What changed?  I think it’s got to do something with my intimate knowledge of my child.  I know he doesn’t go often enough and so I know how important it is for him to go.  It isn’t good if a person can’t get that waste out of themselves so a good father is genuinely and sincerely ecstatic to put two hands in my son’s number two.

God is like that with us, Brethren.  You have this sin living in you.  It doesn’t belong inside.  Just like your waste system we have toilets for letting out the waste. The sin which so easily entangles needs to get out too.  Your body can’t work right without getting rid of the junk and your soul can’t work right if you’re not letting out the sin through the chute of confession. 

Now hold on a minute.  I am not encouraging you to get rid of that sin through the sacrament of confession, although if I’m honest, all God’s people need more confession.  This time I want you to notice Ender doesn’t doodoo on purpose to get rid of the junk.  (Actually, sometimes I suspect he does poop on purpose like if he waits five minutes after his mom leaves.) 

I’d like you to notice, this time, how joyous God is to see you get rid of the waste.  God celebrates your evacuations of guilt. God joyously reacts to any time you get on straight paths.  His, ‘Creation waits in eager expectation for the Sons of God to be revealed, (NIV) or it is waiting, ‘With excitement (ERV).’  If you didn’t know, your father is crazy about you and intimate with your being in a way another shepherd could never be.  Your Daddy can’t wait for you to get rid of all that baggage.    

Wayfarer November

Brethren,

    Christ once said, “I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace.  In the world you will have trouble, but take heart.  I have overcome the world.” 

That verse used to scare me.  I used to not have much trouble.  I thought, ‘Does Christ want me to seek out trouble?’  I was thinking that my life was too easy and simple.  I never was arrested for my faith.  I hadn’t even given all that I had.  I never fed or visited the least of these in prison.  I never needed saving from the den of lions or the fiery furnace because I was never worth throwing into a den or a furnace in the first place. 

    Why do I feel like such a bad Christian when I feel good?  Am I a bad Christian when I feel good?  The brother of my brother (how am I related to James), my brother in the Lord, once said, “Consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds because you know that testing of your faith produces perseverance.  Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”  Those are the kind of passages that make me think about punching the devil in the nose.  It makes me want to make my life a Rocky-like montage of acts of faith and service.  They make me think that if my life isn’t difficult then I must be doing something wrong. 

    But like I said that verse used to scare me because my life didn’t feel too troubled.  Now that verse scares me because I have trouble, but I’m not sure the troubles are the right kind.  Here I am, angry that my students at the school I work at don’t have supportive parents and it’s quasi-difficult for me to do anything to make them invest.  Or today my wife and I are having heart wrenching problems and I can’t help, but suspect that the troubles this world was supposed to have are being drowned out by the one’s it actually has.

    But then I remember what God cares most about.  It’s relationship.  He sent his one and only son so that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have ever lasting life.  He sent his son to save the church and exist in community forever.  He created the church to model the communion of saints.  He cares about relationships.

So I know that my students and my wife ARE the troubles he cares about.  I know that God CARES about these things.  I know that God wants me to take heart because He has overcome the world.  I know that GOD wants me to consider these trials pure joy.      This IS how I punch the devil in the nose; by being as supportive of these kids as I can and working through the difficult times with my wife because it produces perseverance.  I know that perseverance can make me mature and complete. And it still scares me, but one day I might not lack anything.  

Substituting as a Civic Duty

You know those blogs that you see on the internet sometimes and they’re really pretentious.  They think they know everything about anything and they have very few facts, studies, and statistics to prove their points.  You read the blog and you know all the stuff in it is more or less true, but the writer acts as if they’ve discovered the wheel.  You know a thing or two.  You have lived in two centuries.  You got a lot going for you and you even read blogs and articles about education and parenting on the internet so how on earth does this writer think they’re telling you anything?

You know what schools need?  No, this isn’t a trick question and it should be the most obvious answer; many times it isn’t.  It isn’t materials.  We have a lot of those.  It isn’t smaller class sizes although I’m sure that could help.  I like the idea of teachers being allowed to Taser students.  But that isn’t it either.  It's parents.  

Now before you go getting a big head and start thinking that you’re the most important person in your kid’s life, you should know, this sucks.  By the way, there are a bunch of studies that show a parents influence over the lives of their children are decreasing.  My own belief on this topic is that an orphan's parents don’t have much influence over them.  By that I mean, that parents can have as much influence as they want to have. 

Parents can know what’s going on in the lives of their kids.  Parents can pay attention.  Parents can sit down every evening and talk at the dinner table.  Parents can make it their business to know who their kid’s friends are and what music they listen to.  Parents can check their kid’s homework and help them decide where to go to school and what classes they should take in middle school and high school.  Parents can have a ton of influence over their kid’s lives.   You can be one of the most important things in the world for your kid.  And let’s face it, if you’re the kind of parent who reads blogs/articles on the internet about parenting and education you probably are.  Odds are you do some of the stuff listed above.  You might neglect some of them, but you also, probably did it consciously to teach your kids responsibility.  You’re likely, to have a bunch of things listed that I haven’t even thought of.  You’re more likely to be a helicopter parent than an easy going one.  You’re conscientious. 

So what about the people that aren’t?  What about the people that can’t tell you what grade their kid is in?  What about the people who are really mad about their kid getting suspended because they’ll have to stay home with them rather than angry because they did something bad?  What about the parents who AREN’T mad when their kid does something wrong? 

As a teacher I know there is a huge difference between a struggling student and a struggling student who has an involved parent.  The one with the involved parent is getting a B the last week of the six weeks and EMAILS to find a way their kid can get an A.  The struggling student with no parent involvement doesn’t email me and they get a C, a D or an F which isn’t even based on the child’s talent or knowledge because without effort supplied by the parent, the student’s talent and knowledge really doesn’t come into effect.  If a parent is withholding television and or a cell phone in order to get good grades and enforcing a bedtime in order to make sure the student is calm and well rested/level-headed then the student can show off their talents and capabilities.  In my class it doesn’t take much effort to get an A.  It takes even less intelligence.  Parents who are involved are fulfilling a tough job.  But how can we, you and I, those people who are engaged, invested, and adult bring along the people who forgot to take their birth control pills?  How can the upright people bring along the Darwin award recipients?  How can the white collar and blue collar workers bring along the unemployed by choice and the collarless? 

I think there should be a law that everybody has to work in a school as a substitute like Jury Duty.  I don’t think they should be the teacher of record although I’m not opposed to that.  I much more simply think that parents and even non-parents should go to school once a year and take the pulse of our future society.  Everybody, after passing a background check, could go to a school their kid goes to and go with their kid to class. 

In elementary, we’d all see how hard the teachers work.  Maybe we’d know how difficult it is to give a kid personal time even when the teacher only has 15-20 students.  Maybe we’d see how easy it could be to give our own kid fifteen minutes of personal time every night, something that would drastically improve reading and writing in the lower primary grades.  We could play tag with the kids at recess and then maybe we could advocate for longer recess than the kids are getting because kindergartners don’t need to study 6 hours a day.  We could see our kids interacting with other kids.  We could try to help them practice this at home.  We could find out which kids we’d like our kid to be friends with.  

Maybe you don’t have a kid.  Why should you have to substitute?  Our schools are sometimes understaffed and we need help.  Our schools, as the founders agreed, and as most political philosophers believe, are more than just a service or a utility.  Our schools create our future generations assisting our parents.  That’s why we pay for them with our taxes even if we don’t have kids of our own and sometimes we need to pay time with our taxes (sometimes more important than money).  By the way, what about the people who aren’t paying any money into the education system through property taxes, but are being served with their kids in schools?  They should have to serve twice a year.  Adults without kids, properly vetted, could be a valuable asset for individual help, directed encouragement, clerical or manual support. 

In secondary schools, we’d see who the kids are in our schools who are the biggest problems.  We may see how our child is part of the problem.  We may see how hard our teachers work and how much support they really can use.  We could see how the kids talk.  The vapid language of the American secondary school student is a society-wide dumpster.  Would 10-15 extra adults walking around our halls everyday help that?  Maybe.  If it was YOUR mom would it clean up YOUR language?  If it was your friend's mom sitting at your table at lunch would it clean up your table’s language even if just that day?  Could it help papers get handed out quicker, could it help adults remember some of the incredible amount of stuff we’ve forgotten from our school careers?  Could it help us with our gym classes?  Gym is incredibly unimpressive these days.  No weights, no push-ups, no hurdles, no climbing the rope.  I think back to my gym class and remember with fondness the physical intensity that children scoff at today.  Could we remind them?  Could an insurance salesman who is over 50 and completely bald encourage our kids to run an extra lap because it’s good for them?  Could a single mom convince a bunch of apathetic high school girls how lucky they are to play basketball or soccer or lift weights and that they should take full advantage because adulthood doesn't offer many of these opportunities.

This brings more adults into the lives of our kids; a good thing, in my opinion.  I know there are going to be so many laws and lawsuits along the lines of, ‘I don’t want so and so, blah blah blah, hanging out at a school, infecting kids.  Okay, in jury duty there are challenges and dismissals why not substitute/assistant challenges and dismissals?  This also helps create adults who have to be a little more involved in their kid’s lives.  They have to be better advocates for education in the public sphere, they have to be better disciplinarians of their children, and they have to be better advocates for their child’s effort in class.  They know what the districts and schools need.  They know what the parents and administrators need.  They know what their kids and the world needs.

Now, I’m not saying that everybody should do this.  Doctors don’t have to serve jury duty.  They might not need to do this either, but doctors would be really good substitutes for science classes and probably jury foremen. 

I’m not saying everyone needs to be in a classroom or everyone needs to be with their kids if they have a kid.  I’m sure district or school employees could give you a list a mile long of things parents and non-parents could do that would be valuable, effective, safe for children and adults, and tailored to different personalities, interests, and capabilities.

I’m sure some will have a problem with using the force of law to compel work (sounds like the healthcare mandate).  But systems could be devised to get out of these expectations or we could decide to fight hard to make sure that something like this happens that makes our schools AND our communities better.  Could a small town do this?  Could this be a municipal ordinance in a small town with a few thousand in population?  Yes.  Could a school board and a city council make it a referendum and have the community vote on it?  Yes.  Has this world veered too far from the good?  No. 

Without a big city-wide program to get every adult, within reason, to be a substitute at a local school can you and your church small group go through the annoying process to get certified to be a substitute and go substitute on one or two off days a year?  No.  Your church can have an initiative to have half of the members serve as a volunteer.  Your golf team can all make a pact to follow all your kids to each class they have once a year.  Your kid’s soccer team’s parents, or your drinking buddies, or your political party, your book club, the moms of your Boy Scout Troop, or Girl Scout Troop could all make a pact to go to each of your kid’s schools and ask if they need help and how.

Wardrobe Shaming your Own Child

            *Have you ever read a blog or article about education or parenting and the writer makes it sound like they have all the answers and you, the parent of a student, don’t have any?  We try to be understanding because we read articles for their authority on the topic, but the writer has a pretentiousness that we can’t just chalk up to salesmanship.  Don’t you hate those blogs/articles?  They don’t seem to realize that the only people reading blogs/articles are people who are likely to have already thought about the suggestions, adopted them, reconsidered them, refined them and either rejected them or still have them in place.  The writer doesn’t seem to know nor have even the slightest understanding that good parents read blogs and good parents already know how to be good parents.  This is one of those blogs, but I admit that you know.

            “That isn’t a battle we’re fighting.”  When I sent a picture of a kid with a shirt with a bikini girl on it to an administrator in the last two weeks of school this was the response I got.  When I told a student to go to the nurse because she was out of dress code, she did; and changed back after my class.  I’ve had arguments with girls and boys that you can’t have such and such on a shirt or that such and such a shirt is inappropriate and the administration decides this isn’t a battle they’re fighting.  Girls wear shorts too short, and shirts that plunge too low.  Boys wear shirts with girls on them that aren’t dressed enough for the pool.  They wear clothes with smokers smoking, shooters shooting, cuss words, violence, and hate.  

             If there is a code in the dress code it will be bent and if the code isn’t enforced then that code will be bent more until it breaks.  The dress code breaks.  The dress code is not like a damn.  The damn lets some of the water through to relieve pressure.  A dress code when it lets a little through, you can prepare for the breaking of the dam.  Get ready for the flood.

            But it isn’t the administrators who are the problem.  And I’m not just saying that because some of my administrators might read this.  (Wink)  No.  The truth is that a parent MUST not allow a student of theirs to go to school out of dress code.  If you do you are neglecting your responsibility.  I don’t want to tell you what we’re all going to do to you if you continue to neglect your responsibilities (it will include torture).  I just want you to start being the parent you thought you always should have been.  100 years ago 90% of parents either straight up made their kids clothes or purchased them for them in the, 'Butt Ugly Store,'(not a real place).  We didn’t want nice clothes.  We wanted our kids to look terrible because it taught them character.  You know what gives kids character these days?  It’s when they roll up to their middle school in shoes that cost more than an electric bill.  They learn to persevere because they're forced to wear clothes that they purchase at the mall rather than a boutique.  I don’t even know if that’s even a marker of wealth and privilege.  I do know that they AREN’T really learning character or values or perseverance from what they wear because they wear really expensive clothes.  Did I mention that my school is majority ‘at-risk?’  How then can their wardrobes cost much more than mine by factors.  I know it isn’t a competition, but hey spend too much money on clothes.

              My concern, the societies concern, isn’t how much they spend.  I’m not a curmudgeon.  The issue is that you don’t know.  Why aren’t you the parent buying their clothes with them?  Parents give their money to kids and the kids go and buy clothes that the parent doesn’t want to argue about.  STOP IT!  From now on when your kid needs clothes go with him/her.  They want to go alone; don’t let them?  They buy something that has holes in it and you say to yourself, ‘it’s the fashion.’ Don’t buy them the fashion.  Buy them the boring and sturdy.  Our children, yours and mine, need less pre-cut holes in their clothes.  ‘But my kid has a part time job and buys their own clothes.’  You’re allowed to tell them what they can and can’t buy, Parent.  

*Or tell them they can buy it if they want, but make sure they aren't wearing it before they go out, to school or anywhere else.  They must dress for the occasion and school isn't a meth-head occasion. 

            ‘My kid says he needs the new Jordans and I want them to look fresh.’  ‘My daughter won’t shut up about all the other girls at her school with these holy jeans or these rompers.’   (Notice next I’m going to write a sentence without a single quote mark to delineate something I’m going to say sarcastically in response to these last sentences.)  My kid just has to have heroin to get through difficult situations.  My daughter just wants to go and drink beers with five members of the football team without any other girls and I don’t want to listen to her complain if I say no.  Am I saying that you letting your daughter out of the house in a romper is the same as enabling heroin use?  No.  But you not acting like a parent because you are afraid of your kid whining like a kid is the same thing, but with a different degree.  Am I saying that it is bad parenting to let a student go to school in clothes that are not in line with the schools dress code?  Yes.  What if the clothes aren’t outside my value system?  Yes, still.  Your job if no one told you, is to facilitate the education of your student through their school career.  That means every day.  That means ensuring that they are dressed in line with the dictates, good or bad, decided by your school board and school administrators in order to be conducive to education, not having them look fresh so they won't get punked.  

            If they can’t follow dress code there are multiple problems.  1.  You aren’t doing your job.  This sucks for you.  You know you’ll never be a great adult until you’re a parent.  Even good adults can improve with parenting.  And bad adults can totally stay horrible if they do not choose to parent.  It is time that we had a consistent ethic of parenting our children.  Yes.  You’ll screw up, but don’t give up.  A consistent ethic of ensuring dress code compliance is the goal.   2.  It sucks for the kid.  How many jobs have dress codes?  Does yours?  Isn’t it life-training to start following a program of laws and social mores?  Finally, it sucks for the kid because if you’re too scared to enforce rules that aren’t even your rules, then the kid isn’t learning much discipline.  Your kid, your little tyke, your little princess, that girl or boy that you got choked up the first time they hugged you.  Their life will be less good if you do not enforce discipline.  So enforce it. 

            ‘But my kid changes after leaving the house.’  Confiscate the rags they change into.  ‘My kid is too old for me to change on them.’  Sure, give up.  After all if you’re telling me that you cannot enforce a dress code on your baby, a stunning admission, then I can’t really argue with you.  I believe you’re wrong, but I can’t convince of the opposite.  ‘What about uniforms? We could have uniforms and then I wouldn’t have to do anything.’  I’m pro uniform, but a kid can push the boundaries of uniforms too.  Plus, I think parents need more opportunities to parent not more opportunities to avoid parenting. 

            As per usual, I think that people who read my blogs/articles are self-selective of people who might already do what they should in the sphere of children’s fashions.  So if you think this is a valuable message please consider sharing this on your feed?  That way you can give it to people you think need it but not actually say they need it.  Or if you’re brave ask people you know, all of them, how do they purchase clothes for their kids?  How do they enforce dress code?  Do they know their school’s dress code?  Do they shop with their kids?  Do they shop for their kids?  I know it sounds nosy.  It was one of the worst things our collective conscience remembers about the fifties and small towns.  People didn’t know how to mind their own business.  Yeah, but maybe that’s swung all the way to the far end of the pendulum and social media is a way for us to practice the complete antithesis of intimacy with our fellow people.  Maybe that’s bad. 

            Also, if you want to practice self-delusion leave a comment and tell me how I’m wrong.  No language please.