Quote: (09-28-2014 10:47 PM)Feisbook Control Wrote:
I don't think this is a bad thing at all.
I went to a private school in the 80s/90s. Back then, piercings didn't exist (they must have existed in a very tiny subset of the population somewhere, but I don't know where) and tattoos were most definitely not something teenagers got, even amongst the working class. Tattoos were something associated with criminals, motorcycle gangs and the navy.
Anyway, my school had very strict hair and uniform policies. We weren't allowed to have hair over our eyebrows or below our collars at the back. We weren't allowed to wear excessive hair gel or hairspray to hide the length of our hair. Sideburns were limited to 2cm, and we couldn't have any other facial hair. We had to wear our blazers, ties (with the top buttons of our shirts fastened) and school shoes at all times (so no sports shoes unless in full sporting uniform). If we wore anything under our white school shirts it could not be visible through our shirts. Members of staff all wore full suits, except P.E. teachers. Members of staff would patrol the major thoroughfares away from the school after school, and one would go to the local train station and onto the platform to check uniforms. You could be told to get a haircut. Back in the day, they actually used to give you a haircut then and there and then bill your parents.
Of course, at the time, we all hated these rules (I was walking home in the stifling Australian hear in December and wasn't wearing my blazer and the school accountant stopped his car and told me to put it on!). Immediately after we finished school, many of us grew our hair long, grew facial hair and dressed down -- it was the days of grunge, after all -- yet slowly, but surely, I suspect most of us have come to understand and appreciate why our school was like that and how much society has degenerated since.
Same here. When I was at school, you'd be sent home for the most minor uniform infractions.
That included girls wearing skirts that didn't cover their knees, any kind of makeup or jewelry, boys with "cool" haircuts, turning up without a white shirt and school tie, wearing the wrong kind of shoes, and a host of other things that seemed petty and annoying at the time, but that as a parent I now appreciate.
My personal bete noire was the prohibition on facial hair. I started shaving at the age of 13 after being made aware that my attempts at sporting a bumfluff moustache were not welcome on school grounds. I thought it made me look cool and sophisticated.
I don't remember anybody even mentioning tattoos or piercings, the idea would have been too ridiculous even for the most rebellious of teenagers to contemplate. Tattoos were for squaddies and taxi drivers, and facial piercings were something you only saw on pink-haired lesbian art students from the local university. I'm sure if anybody had been brave and foolish enough to try it, they'd have been expelled instantly. I saw kids being thrown out of school permanently for less.
We still got up to all kinds of mischief, whenever we thought we could get away with it, which wasn't as often as we would've liked. I remember the feeling of absolute horror when me and some other boys got caught smoking in the toilets. In our adolescent naivety, it never occurred to us that the teachers might have seen that one before.
While it didn't make sense to me at the time, in retrospect the uniform code helped reign in some of our natural waywardness and allowed some vague understanding of the concepts of self discipline, pride in your appearance, and school spirit to osmose through our formidable barriers of childish know-it-all-ness to our hormone-addled teenage brains. I resented - sometimes even flat out hated - most of my teachers when I was a lad, but I've since grown extremely grateful for them putting up with me for all those years when I was an insufferable little bastard.
There's a popular TV show in the UK called "The Inbetweeners". It's about a group of teenage boys and their adventures in and out of school, and it is hilarious. I can't watch it though, it's too close to the bone and causes me psychic pain to recall that, yes, I was like that too.