Summary
Appearances have become a kind of school violence in America. The experience of the author’s two sisters proves that dress codes can protect students and promote learning.
Although there are many advantages in American schools, the author’s two sisters’ homely clothes are mocked seriously. Students there pay a lot of attention to their appearances than their knowledge. Teachers are often disrupted by students dressing up or making up in the classes. Students also compete with their expensive dresses but not their academic achievements. They even measure parental love by how much their parents will spend on their clothing. As a result of the vicious competition, some poor children may get involved with gangs or peddle drugs to raise the money. Students emphasize the importance of appearances because they think that good clothing can earn more status and respect. Girls think that only sexy dresses make them more attractive rather than intelligence to boys.
Dress codes won’t deprive people of expression freedom. School dress codes can help teacher create the better learning environment. Students will also benefit from it because their minds are more focused on learning. American school should realize that dress codes bring much more benefits of safe and effective schools than the freedom of expression.
Reflections
I approve the viewpoint of Mark Mathabane in “Appearance Are Destructive.” Students should be required to follow dress codes in schools. I think that college is a proper time to let students have the freedom of expression. College students will be more mature to know which behavior is accurate to do.
In my experience, there are some restrictions on students’ appearances in my junior high school. Like all of the boys should have a cropped hair and girls’ length of hairs can’t be longer over ears. Of course, we can’t dye or perm our hairs. All of students’ hairs are exactly the same. Therefore, we won’t pay any attention on our appearances. On the other hand, there are no any restrictions on hairs in school recently. My younger brother pays a lot of attention on his appearances. He dyes and even perms his hairs and cares about his hair style very much. He spends more than half hour every morning to clean up his hairs though he already has no enough time to sleep. Wasting most of the time to dress up him results in his school falling behind.
Comparing to the above examples, I firmly believe that schools should have some dress codes toward students. Wearing uniforms can avoid students do some bad things out of schools because they will be recognized soon.
It was surprised that you choose the same topic like me, and we have lots of common on the dressing between college students and high school students. I agree in dressing uniform but I don't agree that hair need to be limited too. I admit that I have a straight long hair in my junior high school. My experience might be the main reason why I don't think students need to cut their hair during high school, because I didn't feel that having a long hair had influenced my learning at that time. In fact, I might feel frustrated if I cut my hair in junior high school, because my long hair is very important for me. Dress code is needed for students, but it shouldn't limit too much or students might think school as a jail. Freedom is an important quality in nowadays, an appropriate release of the rule will let the school life be more interesting.
回覆刪除Recently, school violence has also become a serious issue in Taiwan. More and more students and school teachers become victims of this, though we keep discussing this issue, we still can not find a good way to fix it. Maybe it is the time for all parents and scholars to face the truth and figure out some ways to solve the problem, not just talking on the TV show and saying some non-sense word.