Re: Is this OT?

[Rick Tarara <rtarara@SAINTMARYS.EDU>]

But the responses to date, I think prove my point about any constructive
suggestion getting attacked from all sides--with the tone decidedly colored
by political philosophies.  The biggest problems are not the teachers or the
administrations, it is all the outside influences.  ;-)

Look, if nothing else, uniforms reduce a LOT of wasted time on the part of
teachers and administrators (my wife has been both) dealing with student
dress.  One might want to look at some of the private schools that do
outperform the public schools and notice that many have very strict dress
codes or uniforms.

Now to stir up thing even more, let me propose that we separate the sexes
from 5th grade through HS (and if you do that, you can probably do without
the uniforms).

[Does anyone want to talk 9-month boarding schools to really improve
learning! ]

Rick

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Richard W. Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, Indiana
rtarara@saintmarys.edu
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Hugh Haskell" <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 11:44 AM
Subject: Re: Is this OT?


> At 11:22 -0500 9/5/02, Rick Tarara quoted:
>
> > In the first year following implementation, overall school crime
decreased
> > by 36%; sex offenses, by 74%; physical fights between students, by 51%;
> > weapons offenses, by 50%; assault and battery offenses, by 34%; school
> > suspensions, by 32%; and vandalism, by 18%.[13,18]
>
> As usual clips like these always raise more questions than they
> answer. The first one that pops to my mind is, what else was going on
> at the same time? We aren't told how the distict's statisticians
> controlled for the "uniform" variable. Often such actions are coupled
> with increased vigilance on the part of the school administration and
> faculty, which is likely to have a large effect on such events,
> regardless of whether uniforms were mandated at the same time or not.
> I would like to see data on how things were after several years, when
> attention to the problems that led to the change had dropped back to
> the pre-change level. There easily could have been any number of
> things done without the fanfare given to the uniforms that made a
> difference--increased police presence on campus, improved
> communications on campus, better counselling services available, more
> administrators patrolling the halls, better communications with
> parents, more involvement by faculty, and on and on. We are told
> nothing about these things, one way or the other. All we hear about
> is the change that the article's author is focusing on.
>
> Hardly a scientific result.
>
> Hugh
> --
>
> Hugh Haskell
> <mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
> <mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>
>
> (919) 467-7610
>
> Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
> have to..
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