FCCDAD, “trophy schools” was my phrase, because frankly, I find “good schools” (yours) to be meaningless in the context in which you used it. Yale is not a good school if it’s not a good fit, any more than Miami-Dade Community College would be for someone who would be better served at MIT.
My daughter is adopted. She didn’t get to roll her own dice but someone did. She got stuck with me when other random orphans got Dan Marino, Meg Ryan, or the Megamillions winning family. Are their possible futures different because their parents are wealthier than me? Of course, whether they go to Harvard or community college.
Any of them can wear the t-shirt if she should get in. Proudly.
@FCCDAD - do you really feel that college shirt day represents the same type of systemic discrimination as lynching (your post #113)? That seems a bit much. If the worst pain my kid was ever going to feel was the “angst” of shirt day I would be thrilled. 1st world probs…
It’s the same kind of mindset, of “most everybody agrees and thinks this is fine, so we’ll keep on doing it” without any thought to the people who are actually getting hurt.
I do NOT think a college shirt day is like a lynching - that’s literally murder. But I do think that the people who once would not have objected to lynchings, truly not seeing why it was wrong, would also not object to a college shirt day if they were brought into our context.
It’s not the kids wearing colleges shirts that is troublesome. It’s the official organization of a day, in school where everyone must attend, that highlights and accentuates these divisions of privilege. You could just as easily have a “household income shirt day” where everyone is told to wear a shirt showing how much money their parents make. The metamessage and effect would be the same.
I think everyday in a public school is household income day…Clothing brands, electronics, the make/model of the cars in the lot, who went where for spring break - it’s not exactly a mystery.
And I am still baffled by the lynching/college shirt thing (and BTW- I teach AP US History, so it’s not the subject matter confusing me) You are comparing raindrops (shirts) to a hurricane (lynching) in terms of “problem”. Find a better metaphor- frankly I find the comparison degrading to all the minorities who have experienced horrific discrimination and violence. I am sure you are right that the people who didn’t protest lynchings wouldn’t have a problem with shirt day- but that seems a pretty low bar to jump over.
No, I am not comparing them as problems. I am comparing the mindsets that accept both and don’t see anything wrong with them.
Let me put it this way: a lot of oppression starts with defining an “in group” and “out group,” and then defining the in group as normal and the out group as subhuman. At that point you can oppress and harm the out group without your conscience bothering you, because they Don’t Really Count.
An organized “College Shirt Day” forces the kids into the in-group/out-group division.
This is a bad practice and will invariably lead to trouble. You see it in our politics all the time. We should be shielding our children from such divisions, not forcing them into them.
Parents make choices all the time that affect their kids. We had one car, and that car did not spend its day at the high school. Sometimes my kids had to take the BUS! Oh, the horror. But my kids are going to college, at least for now, debt free. My daughter’s friend got a brand new car a few weeks before her 16th birthday. No idea who is paying for her college or if it is on the credit card. Other kids had $400 prom dresses professionally hemmed; mine had dresses bought on super duper sale and I hemmed them.
All the colleges sell these hoodies and t-shirts. Is everyone who wears one just bragging, trying to rub it in the face of the guy who didn’t get into Tufts or State U?
Not shielding, but rather pointing them out to our children and explaining why they’re a bad idea.
“subhuman”? I think you maybe wandered off the path just a bit there. KInd of a stretch to try and take a college “Politics of Oppression” curriculum and stretch it over a college t shirt day, don’t you think?
I refuse to believe my kid’s shirt (or anyone else’s shirt) makes the non wearer “subhuman”. Miffed or sad for the day- sure, but I cannot imagine it would be the hardest day of any high school kid’s life. We absolutely need to be cognizant of other’s feelings, but there has to be a line somewhere- and I think we spend too much time worrying about this kind of petty stuff. There are real problems in the world (like actual discrimination) how about we teach kids to create solutions rather than worry about who is wearing what shirt
Classic case of “making a mountain out of a molehill.”
@toowonderful Completely agree, but I don’t think there would be many ‘miffed or sad’ either. By the time kids get to college t-shirt day 95% of the way through their high school career they’ve had plenty of other opportunities to be ‘miffed or sad’ and I don’t think another kid’s Utica College t-shirt would miff them in the least. (Utica College: a good school for me, but not a trophy school! @petrichor11 post #160)
The very fact that practically everyone here acknowledges that there is at least a molehill – that some people’s feelings would be hurt – raises the question of why it’s OK not to care about that.
What benefit is there in the T-shirt day tradition that is so important that it justifies hurting these individuals’ feelings? And if there is a benefit, could it also be achieved in some other way that doesn’t have the same disadvantage?
With all due respect, @marian, someone’s feelings are hurt by everything that happens. In my view, the ‘hurt’ caused by t-shirts is so overwhelmingly minor compared to other real hurts that continuing to discuss it as though it’s a blatant example of economic oppression minimizes the true problems of poverty, economic disadvantages, etc. Seriously, it is so darn trivial and I’m shocked I’m continuing to follow this thread, never mind comment on it! Over and out. 
@marian, read the ‘honors award’ thread going on now - how some schools honor every art project, every sport participant, every book club reader, and that some feel those are the only time their child gets to shine. How about that the student wearing the t-shirt feels proud?
There are other ways to accomplish this. Go back a ways, and you’ll see that Hunt described a school where the names of colleges are posted on a wall. Kids who are attending each college are invited – not required – to write their names under the name of the college.
This provides just as much opportunity for pride but protects the feelings of those who prefer not to announce their destination or don’t have one. In a school with more than 400 kids in the graduating class, the absence of a student’s name from the wall is not conspicuous.
Also, I wouldn’t be sure that the student wearing the t-shirt necessarily feels proud. Some may feel humiliated that the name of the school on the shirt is not the one they had hoped for. And some may feel embarrassed that they are required to publicly flaunt the fact that things turned out better for them than for some of their friends.
Both of my kids would have been in the “embarrassed” group. Both were admitted to their first-choice colleges and were able to accept those offers of admission because money was not a problem. But some of their friends were less fortunate, and they were sensitive to those friends’ feelings. Fortunately, their schools didn’t do the t-shirt thing.
I haven’t seen one post here that described T Shirt Day as required. And it’s really the same thing as posting your name on a wall underneath the name of the college. As if kids can’t read all those other names listed under their “Dream School” that they for whatever reason are not attending.
Also, inherent in the statement that some kids may feel humiliated by either the T they wear or someone else’s T is an elitist view that some colleges are objectively just better than others - or that college is objectively better than any other option for a high school student. This couldn’t be further from the truth. But as long as we have parents promoting such a narrow elitist point of view to their kids, then we shouldn’t be too surprised if problems DO arise (not that they do - this seems to be more an issue for angst-ridden parents).
I really hope all you parents who are so sorry for the “have nots” aren’t communicating in some way that you actually DO see them as “have nots”. Or that for one minute you buy-in with with their self assessment (for those whose humiliation prevents them from talking about their college choice). Seriously, we want to be sympathetic to our children’s feelings but this is taking things a bit too far.
“But I do think that the people who once would not have objected to lynchings, truly not seeing why it was wrong, would also not object to a college shirt day if they were brought into our context.”
They would probably also not object to pizza.
I think that any high school student reading this thread will agree that each and every day walking the halls of the high school is an “in group/out group division.” Just sit in the cafeteria for a day and you’ll get an idea what a lot of these kids go through for four years. Maybe the kid in the out group is getting to wear a Harvard t-shirt that day and he gets to be the “in” kid for once in his life. I said I was signing off but I felt compelled to respond. Officially signing off with Brucemag.
Back when I was in HS, we had something like that.
However, so many seniors including yours truly either couldn’t afford a college t-shirt or didn’t care one way or another that it wasn’t a big deal.
And my public magnet had a jerky contingent who were into making fun or otherwise putting down kids who didn’t get into the Ivies/elite Us or worse…didn’t get into the holy grail of the tippy tops: MIT/Caltech/CMU/Stanford and Berkeley for engineering/CS. The jerky folks who were admitted to those schools made fun of the Ivy admits including HYP because their engineering/CS wasn’t nearly as strong.
We did have a similar form of backbiting where they’d badger you with questions about where you were admitted to or which college you were going. The friends and I in our social circle dealt with it by either saying we’re going to the community college across the street or better yet, state we intend to become full-time beachbums at Beachbum U somewhere in sunny California. The latter really pissed off those who asked such badgering questions.
Ironically, the folks in our social circle included kids who were admitted to some elite colleges…including MIT/CMU/Caltech or the Ivies…but who felt the badgerers were full of it and deserved nothing but smart alecky responses.