I went to a tough school, Piece. It's been a while now, but I know what teachers even back then put up with, in prefab classrooms situated in a sea of mud.
I would not call my DCs' high school tough by American standards, but there are police officers in the school all day every day, security guards, the occasional arrest for drug selling or weapons infractions, a very busy creche for students' babies and toddlers, a fleet of social workers on staff, a whole floor dedicated to students whose psychiatric and/or emotional problems mean they can't be mainstreamed, the occasional fight especially at the latest of three lunchtimes, an extremely wide range of income and expectation and experience of the education system represented in the intake, and yet the school remains committed to a disciplinary approach whose goal is the creation of a strong school spirit and getting the best out of everyone academically and in every other way, with considerable financial resources allocated to enable administrators and deans to meet students where they are, not push square pegs into round holes, or focus on externals. The aim is to see engaged and responsible students.
The American gpa system and refusal to acknowledge a class structure helps enormously to keep students focused and optimistic. Time wasting in the loo will have immediate consequences if it is affecting your work. If it isn't affecting your work, then no problem. No magical solutions along the lines of uniform are considered when students seem to remain alienated. Students with problems are flagged and there is a well thought out and continually tweaked system to deal with them.
How is 'DM sad face' not an attempt to mock?
Lurker Math, you asked why the policy was "subtle" make up. Well I'll repeat what I said earlier, you can either ban it totally which produces unsatisfactory results, or you don't have any rules regarding make up which leads to students coming to school with a full face of make up which has taken an age to put on. As we all know maintaining a full face of make up takes time, so during the day and can distract the girls from learning because they're re-applying their lippy in class, or taking 10 minutes in the bathrooms between each lesson touch it up. Again not ideal, so schools go for "subtle" which is a good compromise.
'Subtle' can mean a fresh faced 'unmade-up' look or it can refer to quantity of makeup or colour scheme or emphasis. It takes quite a lot of time to put on 'subtle' makeup if 'flawless-fresh faced' is the desired look, but no matter what the end result is, it is actually no business of the school what students are using their own time for outside of school hours as long as it isn't cyber bullying. I personally know teens who would happily stand in the shower until the water ran cold morning after morning. While extremely annoying to others who want to use the bathroom, this is no business of the school unless showering keeps them late, and if this is an issue they will soon hear about it and have to think about their priorities.
'Subtle' expresses a value judgement about women's appearance no matter what way you cut it. The value judgement is composed of elements of misogyny and elements of class discrimination. As I said before, the idea behind it is that only slappers trowel on their makeup. You are absolutely right to insist the public perception of the school is important in Britain.
It is shameful that so many unexamined prejudices are allowed to stand, to the immense detriment of the educational process and to those at its mercy. Are parents put off by the impression that there are 'too many' black students in a school, or 'too many' Asian students, or 'too many' who speak Polish or have Irish names or are Travellers, and is it ok to pander to that? Because the end result of that would be racial and ethnic segregation and a divided society along income and ethnic lines, and the continued relevance of the word 'slapper' and other sexist, classist and generally derogatory terms for women.
Oh wait.
The assumption that no ban on makeup and no regulation or code will automatically lead to students arriving with full warpaint daily is one that should be examined. My DCs attend a school with no regulation about makeup and it most certainly does not lead to that.
Yes, girls and boys spend time in the bathrooms at lunchtime and during the four minute passing period between classes if they can squeeze in a bathroom visit touching up whatever they do wear, or their hair, or whatever, but again unless this is making them late to class what they do in the bathroom is nobody's business but their own unless they are hurting other students in there. All tardiness to class is recorded by swiping IDs through hand held devices operated by security guards in each corridor, and 12 tardies in a semester results in a fail for the class. You can only enter class late if you have received a hall pass, with hall passes only issued by the nurse, the counsellors, the attendance office, the deans and the previous period teacher.
How is it distracting from learning to have to touch up your makeup, and is it more distracting than dealing with knickers that give you a wedgie or a blazer that irritates your neck or a tie that keeps you too hot or a red jumper that makes your red haired complexion look bloody awful all day every day, or acne that you can't cover up?
The problem is not that girls are so distracted by their makeup that they forget about school. It is that girls feel alienated from the business and purpose of school and pessimistic about their future and school's role in improving their opportunities, in tandem with too much influence from a surrounding culture that tells them their only value lies in their physical appearance, and in addition there is often a problem with bullying in schools where all the girls feel they must appear made up.
When schools' solution to the issue of girls disengaging from school focuses on their appearance then the girls should be forgiven for supposing that indeed their appearance really is the most important thing about them. Schools that focus on appearance are choosing to deal with only the surface of the problem, and not surprisingly the problem of disengagement is not going away.
Many parents actually rely on school rules to help them with their teeangers and like them: "You can't pierce your lip becasuse the school won't allow you to be in class with it"...
...which is lazy parenting, and setting up the school as The Enemy works against the expectation that students become enthusiastic participants in the process they are asked to take part in. (OTOH seeing my DCs off to a school every morning where individuality is honoured makes the people who really matter in a school the students feel they have a stake in it, feel they belong, feel the school community welcomes them and their accent, their contribution, their effort, and believe it or not this contributes to healthy academic achievement.)
"Get up now or you'll be late and the school will give you a detention" etc etc. Of course all of you on MN are perfect parents and your DC are perfect children who are mature and make balanced decisions but in the real world the school rules help parents to get their children to toe a line that they would like. Even the make up thing can be part of this, you can get your daughter out of the door on time because she isn't in the bathroom for an hour making sure she looks immaculate, or she actually remembers to pack all of the correct books for the day because she isn't making the make up a priority because you can only wear a minimum amount.
Or you can expect your student to get with the programme because ultimately it is their report card and attendance record that is at stake and they are responsible for prioritising and time management.
Or the school can handle lateness in a detached, impersonal way -- record, accumulate data, dish out consequences, but try to get to the bottom of the problem at the same time.
Above all a school can recognise that there are more reasons than just makeup application that cause students to be late for school. Students are up too late, students have to get themselves up and out because parents are dysfunctional or homes are chaotic, books and materials are lost because nobody at home cares enough to provide a spot for them.
Is there actual data to support the proposition that it is makeup application that causes girls or boys to be late? Or is this an assumption that arises from unexamined prejudice about makeup and empty headedness that is composed of all sorts of assumptions about class and femininity and female brains, etc?