If you, in your youth, attended a school that required its students to wear distinctive uniforms, you may have been subjected to the ritual ambassadorship lecture, which consisted of an admonition to be on your best behavior while in public transit to and from school – the reason being that the uniform you detested and wore only under compulsion identified you as a student of the school that prescribed it, and any unseemly conduct you might engage in could reflect badly on the school.
“So, why do they make us wear these stupid uniforms, then?” even the most timidly compliant might inquire.
Why, indeed? What gives a teacher, a principal or a superintendent the right to tell kids how to behave before they get to school or after they leave? What business is that of theirs? If they’re so concerned about the image of the school, then don’t require uniforms. Problem solved.
The sad thing is, they don’t need uniforms anymore. They have facial recognition now, and it’s not just elementary and high schools that are treating us as “ambassadors” off campus. It’s employers, clients, customers, business associates and anyone we might or might not encounter who decides to take offense at something we said or did, or didn’t say or do, in our private capacity as free citizens.
Do we not have private lives anymore? Are we not free to disagree? Has our constitutionally-protected First Amendment right to free speech been suspended?
Ask Tina Renner and Pamela McDonald, two Jefferson County school bus drivers who attended the recent rally in Washington, D.C., to demonstrate support for President Donald Trump and to affirm their allegiance to our remarkable republic.
Jefferson County Schools Superintendent Bondy Shay Gibson suspended the two drivers for their display of patriotism and is now being sued by them in U.S. District Court.
Someone needs to give Gibson a civics lesson. Renner and McDonald may be the ones to do it.