My son recently came under increased scrutiny at school after he arrived home from school with tape on his shirt.
He wore a shirt that he had worn several times before. It said something to the effect of "I have a freaking awesome mom, and yes, she bought this shirt for me." The exact wording is inconsequential; on this particular day the operative, taped-over word was "freaking."
I took umbrage to this for a few reasons. One, my son did not understand what he did wrong. He, like many sensible individuals, did not consider the word "freaking" to be offensive, especially taken in context.
Two, he had worn the shirt before and didn't have problems. When something is disruptive to the learning environment, you'd think that it would be something that causes a noticeable problem.
Three, he didn't know who was offended by his shirt. His homeroom teacher was delegated the duty of covering up or eliminating this newly-created problem, and he says he has no idea who "told on him" (so to speak.)
Four, he often has a similar way of thinking that I do. If something like this were to happen to me, I'd interpret it as someone has a "thing" against me, and tattling...especially by hiding behind procedures to prevent anyone from knowing who was too cowardly to take responsibility and say that they have a problem with it, so I'd know to avoid them in the future...would make me want to avoid everyone, knowing that one of them may well "attack" me again and I have no defense against them.
He's working on ways to better cope with the world. But he is still learning. He's still adapting. And for him, he's very anxious when he feels he is "breaking rules." He wants nothing more than to keep his head down and stay off the radar with the exception of his one self-imposed defining trait, which is his unique hair coloring. Otherwise he stays behaviorally nondescript to the point of being described by many as "shy."
So he's confused and a bit upset that he was singled out. The act of covering the shirt drew attention to it, like a bit of fashion-themed Streisand effect. My wife and I felt that this was mishandled because it dealt with something that was only marginally offensive, as evidenced by the fact that no one seemed to have a problem with it the previous times he wore the shirt and in this case it clearly wasn't causing a disruption in the classroom. It was, we were told, one teacher having an issue with the word and complaining.
I emailed the principal asking what lesson he would suggest Little Dude take away from this; to me, it was against the principle of personal responsibility since the teacher was hiding their identity (although this is a common practice as you get older; you have people who don't want to deal with angry retribution for complaining but feel the need to have the perceived issue addressed which leads to fun office politics and HR speaking in the third person during special meetings...I guess kudos to the school administrator for showing support for the teacher in this case? Administrators supporting their staff seems to be a rare occurrence nowadays, what with teachers waging a war and all...see previous posts if you don't get that reference.) The school liked pushing the idea of character traits to focus on, but this was less "taking personal responsibility" and more a demonstration of "do as I say and not as I do."
It was also arbitrary enforcement of a rule, which just made him more confused. There's no rule in any handbook, from what I could find, saying that "freaking" is a forbidden word. He'd displayed it without issue before. He'd heard religious people use similar words in the context of swearing...darn, gosh, etc...as an alternative to "actual" pejoratives. One day the shirt was fine. The next, he's given a choice of wearing his shirt inside out, taping across the offensive word or wearing a sweatshirt over it (he had no sweatshirt available.)
So how should I explain this in a way that contextualizes and makes the situation make sense to Little Dude, turning this into a teachable moment? I didn't elaborate on my feelings in the message to the principal as I did above; I mostly focused on asking him what lessons the school was imparting, and how to explain them to a confused 10-year-old.
The principal replied with a message asking if we could all meet in person.
It would be easy to say that this was because the principal didn't want his words recorded, or that perhaps he was, like so many others in the education field, technophobic. Maybe he wanted witnesses, or maybe he felt his strength in placating angry parents lay in dealing with issues in person so he can get a "read" on the person, which the written word is often not conducive to conveying for many people. But at this point it didn't really matter. I was supposed to be in town that day anyway, so we arranged to meet Monday morning.
As for the meeting itself, my wife and I didn't go in with any set outcome in mind. I figured he was planning on meeting angry, raving helicopter parents; to be sure, I was angry, but I didn't speak much at all. After having dealt with the school, both as an employee and as a parent (and as a student...this school was similar in many ways to the schools I attended) I figured they would be loathe to actually address the concerns I asked about directly, nor would they want to (or be able to, at this point) argue how stupid it was to consider "freaking" an offensive word. They had committed. An apology would even be out of the question.
I wasn't disappointed. It was made kind of clear through social cues that the position of the school is that this was an inappropriate thing, and they trusted that the shirt would not be a problem in the future. The tone quickly shifted to one of Little Dude needs to just cope with it. If they can help, they will, but really it's not their fault that he can't handle it (this is all paraphrasing and my interpretation of the situation, by the way...I wouldn't want to quote what is said and have misremembered something.) No one is out to "get him" and his homeroom teacher tried to handle it as quietly as she could.
Which...we already knew. The problem is that it's not how his brain interprets things, and the reaction to the situation was such that it drew extra attention to him. But the conversation was, at the 10,000 foot level, quickly communicated that the school was in the right, it was handled how it was handled, and to deal with it in the future realize it was nothing personal. I'm really glad I didn't have to travel 150 miles to get that outcome.
I did email a follow up that pointed out that the original question, asking what lessons were taught by this action, was never really answered, and suggesting that in the future a note home requesting he not have that shirt in school again would probably suffice. The shirt wasn't causing a disruption, and my issue was with how Little Dude interpreted the situation and singling him out over something silly. If he had to go through this the least we could do was have a teachable moment with him...introducing a different perspective that wasn't part of a narrative that sometimes people take advantage of a system to anonymously attack you or that sometimes things the majority of people don't care about will still piss someone off and they'll try to silence you for it.
A simple note home would have meant that I'd still think you were doing something silly and overreacting. But I'd at least have ridiculed that in silence. There would not have been an email, nor this posting, or the obligatory "What the shit, school?!" FaceBook posting. Focusing attention on him, making him think he did something wrong, punishing him for an arbitrary and opinionated interpretation of something like that was a bit much.
The reply I got was probably one of the most diplomatic "go away" messages I'd ever gotten. (Honestly, it was. Very succinct and staying on-message.) It still didn't answer the question nor address the suggestion I made.
Or perhaps it did. The question, he said, may not have an easy answer. And at the end, he said that the teachers will proceed as usual, although the context may be up for interpretation. I'm kind of stretching to say that the questions were addressed rather than deflected.
So I'm back to square one. Part of the problem is my own history with school systems. I came from a family of educators. I worked in the public school system. And it took me a ridiculously long time to come to terms with some things, such as a school isn't really concerned with the craft of teaching or finding better ways to learn. That is what is in the brochure version of the school system. Education. Learning. Academics. Helping kids achieve their potentials, preparing them for tomorrow. Even Little Dude's school district proclaims that it's "Building Foundations for Future Success!"
But really schools are a system. I believed the brochure version of reality growing up...that schools were places to learn, and they cared about learning. If I didn't understand something then it was because I didn't understand the situation, not because of a dissonance between what the school system claimed and what they actually did. I had the flaw. I didn't see why they're doing this but it really made sense, so I had something broken in my head.
This was a kind of example of that. Not just the personal responsibility thing..."I'm so offended this must be stopped, but I don't want them to know who it was in case the parents are mad," but the idea that this was an arbitrary rule enforcement ("Nothing personal, we just found someone who doesn't like it") and a common sense approach to this, seeing as it wasn't actually causing a problem but instead was purely a "we feel like this is breaking an interpretation of the rules" (again...I don't believe this is actually written out as "thou shalt not wear a freaking shirt in school" in any of the rules) that this could just as readily been handled by asking us not to send him to school in that shirt again. Not just Little Dude. Any kid. This was an interpretation of the rules that no one else had bothered to go through the trouble of being offended over.
The principal felt that the fact he had worn it several times without being noticed was unfortunate, but that doesn't make it ok. As an experiment, I wondered what would happen if we sent him in a shirt that read, "Fuck this shit," would that go several days without being noticed? I think it's a little disingenuous to characterize it as a "we didn't notice" when really it was "no one gave a damn until Bob down the hall was offended by it."
I suppose I have to tell Little Dude that schools are systems. They thrive on rules that can be enforced, sometimes arbitrarily, and not treating people as individuals because that takes resources and attention. It took me a long time to learn that; like, an embarrassingly long time. That's part of the reason that it was made clear almost right off the bat that there would be no discussion about the relevance of "Freaking" to the colorful metaphor list (we didn't bring that up, by the way...it seemed to be something he wanted to address right off that we'd not discuss that before diving right into why it was Little Dude's problem to properly perceive the situation.)
Sometimes, being a system, schools will say one thing while still violating those principles when they do things. It's hypocritical. But they'll justify it to themselves, and move on, and be even more offended if you don't accept your situation and do the same.
And sometimes situations just aren't fair, and never will be fair. That's something that schools indirectly teach that is actually quite relevant to life later on. You'll still find yourself in a situation that is uncomfortable, and you don't have the power to tell people that it's wrong. Storybook endings don't necessarily exist, where being right means you end up winning in the end.
Last, perhaps, just because it feels like someone possibly has a problem with you doesn't mean everyone is out to get you, metaphorically speaking. But you should probably be careful who you trust. Teachers are teachers, not friends. It's an important distinction, and one I think many kids don't quite learn the way they should (as well as some teachers...) That's a tough lesson for a kid to learn when your brain is wired to be more literal in interpreting things; the brochure of ideals doesn't match what schools actually do, and that gets confusing unless you start internalizing the dissonance as a problem with yourself and not the situation. It took me way too long to start coming to terms with that. I'd hate to have Little Dude go through years without benefiting from that late realization.
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