Both Boo and Skibo are in the middle school now (which here in our little town is where 7th and 8th grade go to get lessons, if not necessarily to be educated).
Last year, we struggled with issues of dress codes: Boo wanted a blue streak in her hair, so we got her one, only to discover that the school didn't allow it. Then she got called out a few times for wearing "inappropriate" clothing (this, I should add, was ridiculous --- and Boo is most definitely not one to want to break these sorts of rules, or to dress to shock, or worse yet, to "distract the boys").
At one point, a counselor at the school asked her if she were a "bad girl", and did she "regularly get in trouble?" Just a couple of weeks into school, she was being labeled a "bad girl".
She's not. Far from it: she knows her own mind, and as her T-shirt puts it, she's at "Sarcasm Level: Expert".
But she's not a bad girl at all.
Today they had a drill. An "intruder" drill --- they were to pretend that there was a bad guy roaming the school, and act appropriately. But before the drill, they had an assembly, at which the principal called up the male teachers, and all the boys, and informed them that they "had to care of the women, to keep them safe".
My god, but what an unreconstructed attitude.
Now we have to decide how to approach this. Something must be said, but how best to actually effect real change, and not just piss off the basket of deplorables.....
Yours, protected as much as protecting,
N/N
Last year, we struggled with issues of dress codes: Boo wanted a blue streak in her hair, so we got her one, only to discover that the school didn't allow it. Then she got called out a few times for wearing "inappropriate" clothing (this, I should add, was ridiculous --- and Boo is most definitely not one to want to break these sorts of rules, or to dress to shock, or worse yet, to "distract the boys").
At one point, a counselor at the school asked her if she were a "bad girl", and did she "regularly get in trouble?" Just a couple of weeks into school, she was being labeled a "bad girl".
She's not. Far from it: she knows her own mind, and as her T-shirt puts it, she's at "Sarcasm Level: Expert".
But she's not a bad girl at all.
Today they had a drill. An "intruder" drill --- they were to pretend that there was a bad guy roaming the school, and act appropriately. But before the drill, they had an assembly, at which the principal called up the male teachers, and all the boys, and informed them that they "had to care of the women, to keep them safe".
My god, but what an unreconstructed attitude.
Now we have to decide how to approach this. Something must be said, but how best to actually effect real change, and not just piss off the basket of deplorables.....
Yours, protected as much as protecting,
N/N
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