Update: Aycock Middle's school uniform policy has now been formulated and distributed.   There is no mention of the high level of dissention among Aycock parents.  Quite the opposite, Principal Price is pushing forward and prefaces the policy's details with this:

2004-2005 Standard Mode of Dress (SMOD) Criteria

Thank you for continuing to provide input as we focus on our school wide initiatives for next year.  The parent meetings, your individual emails, and presentations to the School Planning and Management Team (school leadership team) have been critical as we create a foundation of exemplary learning for next year.  I encourage you to continue to give us feedback on our progress.  The attached SMOD criteria will give you guidelines for student dress as you shop for next year.  Many of you have asked if there will be a specific vendor that the school will use in conjunction with local stores (Walmart, JCPenney, Old Navy, etc…).  We will send you a list of perspective vendors for your convenience.

 Emails are a flyin'.

***********************

Frequent readers of these pages know that the proposed school uniform policy at Aycock Middle School has been a developing controversy for several months.  Because of a biased parent survey, the school's administrators feel that they have attained "buy-in" but many parents are objecting to the process.  Links to the debate have been established, many thoughtful comments have been offered and one of our School Board members has weighed in on the issue.  This past Friday, WFMY TV visited Aycock to file a story about the proposed policy.

The station only quoted pro-uniform parent Samantha Derr and her dissenting daughter Erica for their story.  The two of them have opposing, but apparently soon-to-be-convergent, opinions on the policy which I'm sure made for good video - although I did not get the chance to see the newscast.

Erica, the daughter representing the student body for the story, is resigned to her fate, "I'm going to miss speaking my mind on my shirt... "All my friends say no, no, no to the uniforms, but when I talk with my mom, she makes a really good case."

Samantha, the parent, is confident that she knows what is best for her child and mine, "I think they'll have a hard time getting used to it, but once they get used to it, it'll be great..."

This uniform thing is not a done deal like the story and the administration might lead you to believe... not by a long shot.  Some of the activists students, including mine, printed up a bunch of t-shirts and distributed them last Friday to protest the impending policy that is supposed to be enforced nest school year.  The WFMY story hints at things to come: "On Monday, students will make their own case. They say they'll pack these halls in protest wearing their own kind of uniform, a t-shirt that is anti-uniform."

Next battleground? The School Board will have to change their policy regarding student dress.  There are a lot of parents who think they are being ignored by the Aycock administration and are looking for redress (there's a pun there somewhere).  Aycock's administration is quite entrenched in their decision to move forward with the "standard mode of dress" policy despite all of the evidence and local parental outcry that such a policy won't fix what actually ails the school.  Efforts will have to be made to trump the Aycock administration's perceived authority on the issue by taking the matter up the decision making chain.

As always, I'll keep you posted.

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It's just in the blood.  Tomorrow my rising 8th grade daughter Josie kicks off her campaign for 1st Vice President of Aycock Middle School's Student Coucil.

The race is fraught with issues and controversy and we have been strategizing all night about how to win the seat.  Every candidate is running on a "no school uniform" plank in their platform so she decided to tackle other issues to separate herself from the pack.  She took the initiative to survey her fellow students last week to see what is on their minds - among the student's concerns which she will be forwarding are...

• More rewards for good students
• More dances
• Better smelling bathrooms and locker rooms
• Proper water fountain temperature (sometimes too hot, sometimes too cold)

She has made up t-shirts, printed a bunch of stickers, created campaign posters and finalized her campaign speech which will be delivered this coming Friday - a very powerful oration which will certainly separate her from the status quo.  Josie is quite a girl.... teetering on womanhood.

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Mr. Sun is convinced that Congressional candidate Vernon Robinson has some closeted tendancies and they are best exposed in limerick form:

            There once was a man named Vernon
Who hid his unnatural yearnin'
      The more he pretended
      The more he suspended
The fire in his loins a-burnin'

Me thinks Mr. Sun may have a point and that he also has a peculiarly warped and wondrous mind.

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Common wisdom says that as a white man, I can't point an objective finger towards, nor suggest possible solutions to, problems within any ethnic/socio-economic group of which I am not a member.  That means that I can suggest that the Irish and the Scots might want to keep a close eye on their drinking habits, but I can't suggest that, say... there is little parenting going on within many lower income families which results in destructive behaviours at school and elsewhere. 

Cross-cultural criticism is just not done in mixed company but is generally reserved for same-culture conversation.  To do otherwise publicly will likely get the non-member critic/commentor labeled as elitist, or worse... racist.

Bill Cosby's speech (WordNet Daily) before dignitaries gathered in Washington to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Brown vs Board of Education this past Monday reflects same-culture (in this case Black) criticm.  The reason his remarks are creating such a stir however, is because the Cos was speaking to a mixed crowd - out in the open.  This is simply not done - and that is a shame.

Newsday provides some of Cosby's remarks which lambasted uninvolved parents as being a large part of the reason inner-city schools have a 50% drop out rate among the Black population:

"Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal.... (T)hese people are not parenting.  They are buying things for kids - $500 sneakers for what?... (A)nd they won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.' ..."

Cosby's comments created enough of a firestorm that he finally felt he had to defend himself in yesterday's NYT:

"A 50 percent dropout rate in 2004 is not all about what people are doing to us. It's about what we are not doing. The Legal Defense Fund and the N.A.A.C.P. can deal on those points of law, but something has to come from the people."

Because he took this as an attack on African-Americans, social critic/writer Michael Eric Dyson is quoted by the Times as characterizing Cosby's remarks as being "ill-informed" and that they, "only reinforce suspicions about black humanity."

But purveyor of "the 'old school' of African-American politics and culture", conservative blogger Michael Bowen, aka Cobb, says the reaction to Cosby's comments are much ado about nothing in a post on the subject. (new HoggsBlog blogroll addition BTW):

"Lots of conservative commentators show how few blackfolks they know by being dead flat shocked by such talk. Over here in the Old School it was our bread and butter. Nobody knows class warfare like us uppity negroes. But Cosby is not engage in warfare, it's simply the kind of thing you hear from blackfolks with strong families and values. This should come as no surprise to our white conservative cousins..."

I have posted on the value of parental involvement as being the best indicator of a student's success many times.  I even had the audacity to point out that this apparent lack of  involvement is a big factor in the inordinant percentage of disruptive behavior and suspensions among poor black children here in Guilford County and have been challenged for doing so.

Cosby and other leaders, both black and white, need to bring up the hard issues in mixed company more often because whispering among ourselves usually means we are trying to hide something.  It is obvious that merely talking among our respective selves is not gaining any of us any ground.   Open, honest cross-cultural comments and conversations can prove to be risky undertakings as Dr. Cosby discovered, but these are risks we should be willing to take.  If we want things to remain as they are... we'll keep whispering only to our own kind.

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