Sunday, May 17, 2009

Here We Go Again With The Kilts

I wrote about kilts at school over three years ago, and my position on them hasn't changed. The story at the link above is bad enough, but the administrative lobotomy the principal in this story must have had in order to do and say what he did--well, the doctors must have scraped a lot of brain out of there, if there was any to scrape in the first place.
The principal of a Utah middle school has been asked to apologize for forcing a kilt-wearing student to change his clothes...

Gavin says he wore the kilt twice in the past two weeks to Rocky Mountain Junior High as a prop for an art project. Jessop told the boy that the outfit could be misconstrued as cross-dressing.
Sheesh.

14 comments:

Happy Elf Mom (Christine) said...

MISCONSTRUED is right.

Ellen K said...

There was a kid at one school that wore a kilt. But he also had a seven inch mohawk and silver studs in his ears. If he was crossdressing, he was missing the point.

Scott McCall said...

what, the principal has a thing against cross-dressers? i'd like to see him try to tell a student with gender-identity-disorder what to wear.....that'll get him fired quickly

Huston said...

Are you suggesting that schools SHOULDN'T be strenuously campaigning against Scotland? Those Celtic varmints are a menace to society, what with their haggis and bagpipes and whatnot. This principal did these kids a favor, shielding them from an influence more harmful than MTV and syphilis combined.

Darren said...

Huston is *clearly* a racist/ethnist/anti-Celtist. What do you have against haggis?

Ellen K said...

You do know what haggis is don't you? Favorite comment: The Irish gave the bagpipe to the Scots. And the Scots still haven't gotten the joke.

Darren said...

Yes, I know what haggis is. And should I ever go to Scotland, I will be sure to have some.

JJ Ross said...

Mrs. C just mentioned your stupid-school principal post when she saw photos of my 13-year-old son in his Ross family tartan kilt Saturday, playing his D Naill great highland bagpipes in his first Scottish games.

My career was in public schooling but he's never been sent to school, always happily unschooled, and this is the best example I've seen lately of WHY! :)

Although in a wicked twist of ethnocentrism, I can report that there was another piper about Young Son's age, whose dad wants him to embrace his Scottish heritage and pushes him to play. The boy (who attends public school) flatly refused at rehearsal last week, to borrow a proper kilt for the performance, and you could tell school peer jeers were on his mind.

So he showed up in long shorts. And thus he was summarily excluded by the pipe majors in charge, from marching with the massed bands for the opening ceremony -- justice?
;-)

p.s. we also ordered an American "Utilikilt" for Young Son a couple of months ago and can't get it off him! He wears it everyday like jeans, to the mall, for pizza and the movies. So far the general public seems more enlightened than the public's schools, and maybe there's a good lesson in that for all of us?

Darren said...

Clan MacFarlane, baby!

JJ Ross said...

(I just married into Clan Ross, with my own all-English heritage, shhh, don't ask, don't tell!)

So my dad wasn't Scottish; he was conservative small-town southern gentleman who went to Clemson when it was still an Air Force Academy and made a dashing officer in Korea. I was literally born on a base in the States.

My only point being, he would be proud of my son, who isn't just playing around for some suspiciously liberal arts project; this is a MILITARY UNIFORM! There are all sorts of rules and standards to respect and conform to! And the military was all over our games this weekend. I think every branch has its own kilt-wearing military pipe band. I've personally scrutinized the U.S. Coast Guard's uniform code online, to see exactly how the piping sporran is to be worn. (It is opposite-colored from the drummer sporran btw.)

So of all Americans to be against kilt-wearing as deviance, wouldn't you think military-exalting conservative homophobes running schools in a very red state would be the last??

JJ Ross said...

Followup to Ellen's joke, told from the stage during tuning Saturday:

Q.
How do you get two pipers in tune?

A.
Shoot one of them.

MasonPiper said...

Wow, I am a Piper (David Nail pipes do rock, I love mine) and wear kilts all the time, except at school. I feel the Dean (me) should not give parents, who are unhappy with me, any other ways to try and distract the conversation about consequences than they already have. Of course this kid should be able to wear the kilt as long as it meets the (I know there is one) district code.

BTW
Try FreedomKilts, SportKits or AltKilts too and if you are really in the mod to dive in to the kilt lore google "x marks the scot"

Piper
At home for 7 days because of a high temp, hacking cough and body aches.

JJ Ross said...

Sigh, you're right Darren, and it was more than a little judgmental, based on facts not in evidence against this particular man. I used to be a school principal myself among other administrative and policy roles. (I actually think I'm taking this more personally because of THAT than I am as the mother of a kilt-wearer.) Withdrawn, your honor!

neko said...

You're not thinking with your dipstick, Jimmy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj5ms9PJDNY