Our casual age wants to insist that how a student dresses will have no effect on the operations of his brain. Surely a student can learn and study and memorize without his wearing of sweat pants or jeans or shorts interfering with the task. At least, that is the way it seems to many.
But there are good reasons for challenging this assumption, and we need to challenge it soon. The standards of our broader culture are not static and can be expected to deteriorate further. If we do not think through the issues clearly, a common pattern followed by Christian schools will continue - anything the world does, we can do five years later.
Is school dress an academic issue? The government schools of a generation ago had stricter standards of dress than many private schools today. And if a school today tries to tighten up its standards of dress (e.g. "Boys, tuck in your shirts."), the uproar - and not all of it from students - can be considerable. Many times parents will get into the act, writing off those hapless conservatives and traditionalists as sartorial gnat-stranglers: "Why don't they just concentrate on teaching? What do torn jeans have to do with math?"
If the modern and casual approach to student dress is seriously questioned, the response invariably will appeal to personal ease and comfort. Jeans and T-shirts are more comfortable than button-down shirts, ties, and slacks. So the solution is obvious, right? Not exactly.
Let's look at that "comfort" defense. It supposes that a person's reasons for dressing in a particular way are subjective. They are to be found within himself. Whenever a person is asked to justify how he dresses, the criteria produced are what he wants to do. Where did we get the idea that our choice of clothing is justified by how it makes us feel? Why is self-centeredness simply assumed as the only possible court in which we are to try such cases?
Suppose we accept the criterion of comfort, but point first to the comfort of others. Certainly a shirt and tie are less comfortable to wear than a baggy T-shirt, but the shirt and tie certainly are more comfortable for others to view. So the issue isn't just comfort, but whose comfort. With our casual, it-must-be-comfortable-for-me-to-wear orientation, we have inflicted far more discomfort on passersby than previous generations ever did. Sometimes the assault is deliberate. In other cases, it simply is thoughtless. But in a school which has stricter dress standards, the comfort of the broader culture is served and, greatly increased.
Christian schools can appeal to duty in the matter of dress. Rather than allowing a student's duty to be only to himself, the Christian school should teach him to put the interests of the larger community before his own. And what will be the result when this habit of mind about dress is brought to his studies?
We do admit that a clean and starched collar can prop up a blockhead. And each of us has met zealous and industrious students in blue jeans. But generally, does discipline of dress carry over into other areas? To ask the question is to answer it.
Still, objections crowd into our minds. Strict dress codes or uniforms can be caricatured as some form of tyrannical mind-control: "We don't want to suppress our child's individuality." But why do we raise this objection over dress, and not over spelling and math? Why not say, as the government schools are saying, that we should let these kids be personally creative in all areas?
The answer is that disciplining a mind is not to be equated with destroying a mind. And to let a student discipline himself "creatively" is tantamount to expelling him from school. A disciple is a student. An undisciplined student is therefore a non-student.
In education we cannot return to a culture of the mind without that training having a cultural impact. We cannot isolate how our students dress from how our students think. Neither can we detach how they learn to dress in their calling as students from how they learn to think as students.
People who insist upon dressing casually also want to think casually. And in a fallen world, thinking casually means being wrong more often than not.
-- Douglas Wilson, God's World News
The Sin of Bathsheba, Patriarch Magazine
"Men need to instruct their wives and daughters concerning modesty in dress and the effects their dress has upon men. Read it carefully and be honest with yourself."
Two Jonathan Lindvall articles on Modesty and Immodest Clothing.
The Importance of Modesty, Elisabeth Elliot and Lisa Barry
"Although I cannot control what other people wear, especially on the outside world, it seems disrespectful to me to see ladies in church in very short skirts or skimpy, sleeveless tops. I would imagine that it could be distracting to men who are trying to keep their minds on God."
Modesty and the Christian Woman, Mrs. M. L. Chancey
"Views on dress today cover the spectrum from 'anything goes as long as my private parts are covered' to 'I cover myself from neck to ankle and never wear anything bolder than navy blue.' It is unfortunate that modest dress is a controversial topic in Christian circles. What should be a fairly easy issue to decide upon (and obey) has been fragmented into dozens of 'sub-arguments' about liberty versus legalism, law versus grace and shamefacedness versus ostentation. Our culture is so saturated with immodesty that we have become desensitized to it in many ways."
Modesty, Wayne Cobb
"I have, and I am sure that you have, too, often wondered just whose opinion is correct concerning the subject of modesty in the clothes that we wear. One time, as I was contemplating the subject, two sets of scriptures came to mind which convinced me that within the covers of the Bible, God has given commands, principles and examples concerning the boundaries of modesty as pertains to clothing."
Christian Dress and Adornment, Samuele Bacchiocchi
"The subject of dress and adornment is sensitive because it touches what some people treasure most, namely, their pride and vanity. What we wear is very much a part of who we are. Our clothes and ornaments reveal not only our social, economic, and educational levels, but also our moral values. What we wear tells what we want the world to believe about us."
Many links related to Christian Modesty and Femininity & Modesty.
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