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This isn’t actually true, the real reason is that it forces everyone to look the same, with no more silly short ties, keeps everything neat. That isn’t a very good story though, so everytime a school suggests it the silly safety story gets printed instead.

Ties actually are a hazard in certain laboratory and shop situations where they can get caught in machinery or flop into containers of chemicals. Of course, this only requires that they be forbidden in such classes, or that, e.g., lab coats be worn over them. Of course, for the life of me I can’t imagine why schools would want students to wear ties at all, but that is another matter.

Blawg Review 223, Sphincter Rules…

Today was not my day to do Blawg Review….

Bill,

I graduated from a public school where the students implemented a dress code that included ties. It had been that way since when the school was founded in 1883.

The student government handed out punishment for those who were caught without ties. No teachers, administrators and no school board was involved.

When I attended school there, the school had the lowest rate of discipline issues of all kinds in the city. In second place was another public school that was our arch rival and founded at almost the same time. They too had a student run dress code.

Eventually the “you’rer not the boss of me” mentality caught on and the students would balk at system they were inheirating from those who had gone before them.

It went by the wayside.

There probably are other factors as well, but the school is no different than any other school in the city now.

Wearing a tie was part of the school’s training that you were a gentleman. When you got to the school, you may have been a snot nosed youth, but when you left, you were a gentleman. Your appearance mattered, so when you went into the real world, you were prepared and comfortable in business attire.

It was hard to have fights, be disrespectful, or a jerk while wearing a tie. There was a certain aura and professionalism about it.

I can’t imagine why a school wouldn’t want kids to be wearing ties.

I guess your experience and mine differ.

Gitacarver,

You express very well the reasons for my opposition to such dress codes. Teaching students that form matters more than substance and that clothing rather than character is what makes a gentleman are precisely the sort of error that schools should avoid. Furthermore, a great many students will end up outside the coat-and-tie business world, and that world and its mores are by no means the ideal at which students should aim. I’d much rather see schools educate citizens and scholars than corporate flunkies.

Sorry Bill, but there was no “style over substance.” The student led dress code allowed students to learn about government and responsibility. It helped students learn about respect for themselves and others. It helped create an higher academic learning atmosphere. As a consequence, the school’s three levels of academic paths were well respected. Men that graduated from the advanced college prep course would walk into many colleges with college credit under their belts without taking a single standardized test. The college prep guys could do some of that, but they had not taken as many college level courses, so they didn’t have the same “walk in the door options” as the advanced college prep guys. Finally, the men that took the “technical” path and learned things like drafting, machining, woodworking, etc, still were able to walk into a job interview and present themselves as a professionals. The academics they took was equivalent to the “college prep” courses of the other schools.

The school trained students to high academic standards. It trained them on how, as you say, to be “good citizens.” It trained them to deal with the real world, not the “world owes me something” that many kids get today. In other words, the school trained not only scholars, tradesmen and citizens, but men of character.

Good Grief…

Here’s another entry in the funny-in-a-roll-your-eyes-sort-of-way. The BBC reports that schools in the United Kingdom are switching to clip-on ties because of fears "of ties getting caught in equipment or strangling pupils." Let’s be hones…