By CAL BEVERLY
Publisher

Our Letters pages have been filled in recent weeks with opinions about two separate but important issues involving the Fayette County school system: a $90 million special local option sales tax referendum for new school construction and a stricter dress code for students.

The dialogue continues on this and following pages. By the time this appears in print, the local board of education will have voted on accepting or watering down the very reasonable dress rules proposed by a large committee of system staff members, parents and interested students.

Our opinion on the penny-added SPLOST will wait, but we want to take our stand in support of and alongside the board of education and the School Safety Committee, which came up with the dress code recommendations.

If anything, we stand four-square in favor of even tougher restrictions than those presented to the board for approval. Since there seem to be so few who want to give this board credit for anything, consider this our public kudos for a group of beleaguered citizen volunteers who want the best for our children.

To the facts now, absent the often empty-headed emotionalism that substitutes for rational thought in much public debate nowadays.

Schools exist to educate children. Education consists of facts, or should. Children lack mature judgment. Adults are supposed to teach children how to leave childhood behind so that they may become civilized, productive, law-abiding citizen-adults.

Schools are a critical way-station for children on their way to chronological adulthood. Teenagers are still children. Once upon a time, adults knew that, and so did kids. Our rational thought processes as a society have regressed in recent decades.

It's easy — and often destructive — to cry, “It's my right,” when confronted with dress codes and school rules. Where are those who say, “Yes, sir,” and “Yes, ma'am,” and shoulder their societal and cultural responsibilities? Answer: Fewer are visible than ever in our memory.

To the young, dress is a big issue. Why? Because it's “their” dress, different from adult dress. Many teens object to “uniforms.” But, most kids already are wearing uniforms — they all look the same. The difference: the kids make the choice, not the adults.

Does any adult seriously believe that's a good thing — that choices can be divorced from consequences? Have you tried getting a decent job with pierced eyebrows and tongue rings and ratty jeans? Is the business world going to change its dress code to accommodate “self-expressing” teens? Why do we delay teaching them that teens must accommodate themselves to the real world?

Responsibilities must trump rights, as most adults realize. These days, many adults want to give immature teenagers most of the “rights” of adults with few if any of the attendant responsibilities that must go hand in hand with the “rights” if civilization is to continue.

“Getting back to the basics” must include a renewed sense of individual responsibility, instead of a poisonous demand for more “civil rights” divorced from any sense of civil responsibilities.

“Self-expression” in dress among the young has just about reached the limits of civilized tolerance. You see 14-year-olds in school hallways wearing stuff that strippers once considered their province. You see age-old teen rebellion elevated to a self-referential religion that demands acceptance from those who ought to know better.

It's time for adults to say to the immature: “We know better. You need rules because you lack mature judgment. Someday you will be mature, but you are not showing it today. Self-expression is another name for hollow self-indulgence, and you don't need any further lessons in how to indulge yourself. Here are the rules. Follow them.”

We adults had and have dress codes. We didn't and won't die from them. Neither will our aggrieved young. And they will be learning an adult lesson: You often don't get your own way.

The school system is right to seek consistent, system-wide enforcement of a reasonable, civilized dress code, determined by adults who know better than children. We support those efforts with enthusiasm.

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