Casual Fridays

Is it just me or have the standards for what is acceptable to be seen in changed as well as everyone's attitude about it. I look at the kids at school and wonder this every single day. Now, I am not asking for them to come to school in Sunday best, (though their behavior might change if they did). Nor am I asking that we go back to the time when girls wore only dresses and boys wore dress slacks and button downs. But I am asking for some kind of boundaries here.

We have students that wear their pajama bottoms to school. I don't get this at all. I would be mortified for anyone outside of my family to see me in my pj's. You know the ones made out of flannel that reaches the floor, long sleeves and high neck and all? And they wouldn't even see that because I would have my even longer and higher robe over them. I remember the day after I came home from the hospital after a major surgery. My husband was at work, the boys were all gone to scout camp and the girls were still in bed. I had made my way to the kitchen for some medicine-in my pjs and robe- and the bishop stopped by on his way to work. While granted it was perfectly fine for me to be in my pjs and robe, being sick and all and I was in my own home after all, but I was still very uncomfortable to be granting and audience, as it were, in my nightclothes.

Yesterday one of the students showed up to school in her pj's. Tops as well as bottoms. She even had the fluffy slippers on her feet! She really looked as if she had rolled out of bed, pulled her coat on and came to school. This morning she was wearing the same thing, down to the fuzzies.

I would be a little concerned, or think that she was maybe a bit eccentric if this did not appear to be the norm. As a psych major, I have to wonder if this relaxing of dress standards is a result or a symptom of the relaxing of so many other standards. Students do not speak respectfully to teachers (or each other, I might add), they are constantly tardy, they do not seem to understand that yelling down the hall during class is rude, or why ditching/sluffing is wrong. Not talking while the teacher is talking is also something they don't understand. And when a teacher is reprimanding a student, when did it become acceptable to argue with the teacher?

Before you ask, yes we do have a policy against pajama bottoms at school, but it becomes very hard to enforce when so many are wearing them. Maybe it was the same when girls wanted to wear pants instead of dresses. Sometimes change is good, but for me, I would just as soon leave my private clothes home, in private, not on parade for the whole world to see.

I'm just sayin'