Mostly a control issue, some of the admins in school systems go on power trips.

I remember my high school put a ban on “public displays of affection” we called it the kissing ban and held a kiss-in.

I hate to sound like an old man, but it would be nice to see a return to the days when kids dressed for school differently than for play, and acted differently in class than on the playground. It’s not about “freedom of expression.” It’s about preparing them for the real world, where people who don’t know how to behave in the workplace suffer economically for it. School used to teach that, both by modeling the behavior and by insisting on it almost by osmosis — you didn’t need to tell kids not to bring toys to class, not to eat in class, not to wear obscene t-shirts, not to sit in class yakking with each other. It was understood, and the kid who broke one of those rules was quickly corrected. Some teachers were nicer about it than others, but it was still the way things were and we all understood that.

My middle school had a ban on overalls that were half unclasped. I think we had a ban on backwards clothes too. HA.

I do like how some schools have a “business casual” type look – I do audits at schools now, and one district had a “khakis, navy blue or white shirts w/ collars, or any tshirt that was related to the school (sports, etc.)” dresscode. It was nice.

The dress code at our local school is khaki or navy pants, and red or white collared shirts. Works for everyone, and the kids don’t complain because they say they always know what they are going to wear to school. The parents like it because it means that there is less time spent every morning getting ready and the teachers say it eliminates distractions. The kids are allowed to wear sports clothes for special games and playoffs and on their birthday they are not required to wear their uniforms. It seems to work for everybody.

A friend of mine in college who often wore a cutoff denim vest told me that his school banned jackets with inside pockets, supposedly because kids could conceal weapons in the pockets. (The one exception was that athletes could wear their letter jackets, which of course torqued off everyone else even further.) So he cut the sleeves off his denim jacket, turning it into the aforementioned vest. It of course still had inside pockets, but was no longer a jacket, and so met the dress code.

I agree, LogicalMama, you can’t ban things like pens that click school-wide (as much as I’d like to!). I just had to do it for a particular class because I had one kid who clicked constantly to annoy the people around him, and then they all started doing it. My school has a pretty strict dress-code (only human colored hair, no facial piercing, pants have to be around your waist, no tank-tops or cut-offs, no pants with holes above the knee, no flip-flops, etc…) because all those things are either a. distractions or b. unsafe. And sometimes it’s no big deal, but they have to ban them all together or the kids walk the line and it’s too hard to say well “that’s okay, but that’s not, and it all depends on the mood I’m in today”. I wish they’d ban v-neck shirts. I know it sounds extreme, but seriously, if you saw as much teenage cleavage as I did every single day, you would agree. I swear, I least once a day I have to tell at least one student that she needs to sit up straight because her boobs are f.a.l.l.i.n.g. out. I’m talking nipples here.