Awful Halloween costumes

In article , Kevin Karplus says...

In article , Banty wrote:
Uuurgh. I wish the schools, if they can't go in for the whole Halloween
ghosty-ghouly-gory thing (OK, fine, maybe they can't, they have a
whole range of parents and philosophies to consider), they'd just
wish the kids Happy Halloween on October 31 and send them home to
the festivities.

Because this idea of having a school Halloween party, which of course all the
kids will have to dress up for, but it can't be what a lot of them
*really* want to dress up like, necessitates having two costumes
and more preparation, or the kid compromising, and it gets the heck in
the way of Halloween.

There doesn't have to be a school Halloween party, especially if the
school is queasy about it.

The school costume parade is very popular with the kids, so the school
does it as a treat for them. I think many of the parents appreciate
that the school doesn't allow very gory costumes, since they can then
tell their kids "OK, but if you really want that costume then you
can't wear it in the school parade." I doubt that many of the kids
get 2 costumes (over 40% of the school is in the free or reduced price
lunch program).

Students don't have to participate in the Halloween costume parade, so
if a kid really wants a gory costume, he can choose not to take it to
school and just wear it in the evening. For such a student, this is
almost the same as Banty's proposal, and the vast majority of students
can have a school parade to show off their non-gory costumes.


?? My proposal?? That *was* my post :-)
My proposal is that schools stay out of a celebration, if they feel compelled to
place scruples on it.

For parents who believe that there should be no 'violence' or 'blood', having a
school hoo-haa with costumes and all that, but with certain standards applie,
this is all hunky -dory. They can prepare one costume, and use the school
standards to reinforce their own to boot. No suprise that you and David don't
see a problem with it.

For the kid that wants to be Freddy and his parents don't object, he'll either
have to give that up, or have his parents buy or prepare two costumes for all
the events. Or not participate in the school event, and lose out and stand out.
Which puts the whole thing into a bind.

Is that the effect desired - to foster non-violent non-bloody scruples regarding
Halloween celebrations in *other* families than your own?

Banty

"Kevin Karplus" wrote in message
...
In article , Banty wrote:
Uuurgh. I wish the schools, if they can't go in for the whole Halloween
ghosty-ghouly-gory thing (OK, fine, maybe they can't, they have a
whole range of parents and philosophies to consider), they'd just
wish the kids Happy Halloween on October 31 and send them home to
the festivities.

Because this idea of having a school Halloween party, which of course
all the
kids will have to dress up for, but it can't be what a lot of them
*really* want to dress up like, necessitates having two costumes
and more preparation, or the kid compromising, and it gets the heck in
the way of Halloween.

There doesn't have to be a school Halloween party, especially if the
school is queasy about it.

The school costume parade is very popular with the kids, so the school
does it as a treat for them. I think many of the parents appreciate
that the school doesn't allow very gory costumes, since they can then
tell their kids "OK, but if you really want that costume then you
can't wear it in the school parade." I doubt that many of the kids
get 2 costumes (over 40% of the school is in the free or reduced price
lunch program).

Students don't have to participate in the Halloween costume parade, so
if a kid really wants a gory costume, he can choose not to take it to
school and just wear it in the evening. For such a student, this is
almost the same as Banty's proposal, and the vast majority of students
can have a school parade to show off their non-gory costumes.

In general, our rule is "Nothing which will give the little ones (we have 4
yr old Title I preschool, as well as all-day kinder) nightmares". This rules
out the really gory, scary stuff-and the older kids seem to understand the
limit. Relatively few of my kids have the really expensive, scary masks
anyway-maybe because we're a low income school.





--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

Banty writes:
Is that the effect desired - to foster non-violent non-bloody scruples
regarding Halloween celebrations in *other* families than your own?

I think the effect desired is to avoid using the coercive power of the
state (i.e., children are required to attend school) to expose them to
stuff that many parents dislike.

But personally, it would be ok with me if you kept your child home that
day, rather than subject him to the insufficiently violent Halloween
celebration.

David desJardins

wrote:

In general, our rule is "Nothing which will give the little ones (we have 4
yr old Title I preschool, as well as all-day kinder) nightmares". This rules
out the really gory, scary stuff-and the older kids seem to understand the
limit.

That seems perfectly reasonable to me, particularly as my son was just recently
scared out of his wits by a treat-distributing green-faced witch in Value
Village. (I was really ticked that they didn't get the hint and go away before
I said "Could you PLEASE move on, my SON IS REALLY SCARED NOW!" Apparently
moaning and hanging on to mom's leg isn't enough to get the message across ...)

I am actually surprised that some ordinary places like grocery stores have such
scary displays. I was in a QFC that had skull balloons today that I thought
were pretty creepy-looking.

--Helen

In article , David desJardins says...

Banty writes:
Is that the effect desired - to foster non-violent non-bloody scruples
regarding Halloween celebrations in *other* families than your own?

I think the effect desired is to avoid using the coercive power of the
state (i.e., children are required to attend school) to expose them to
stuff that many parents dislike.

And how about Banty's Proposal: have a nice school day, send the kids home with
Happy Halloween wishes. And partake of no PC Halloween parties.

You can dress your kid up as the Pillsbury Doughboy, I can let my boy be Rambo
with a flame thrower if he wants. They might cross paths during
trick-or-treating, though ;-)

Banty (mmmmm - biscuits)

Banty writes:
And how about Banty's Proposal: have a nice school day, send the kids
home with Happy Halloween wishes. And partake of no PC Halloween
parties.

That would be fine with me too. I don't really like Halloween parties
at all, not having them at school would be just great as far as I'm
concerned.

But I don't see your desire to have either an ultra-violent Halloween
party or none at all, as having any more or less weight than some other
parent's desire to have a nice "PC" Halloween party that their kids will
enjoy. If there were more people like you, who dislike the parties,
than people who like the parties, then it would certainly make sense to
skip them. But I doubt that's the case.

David desJardins

In article , David desJardins says...

Banty writes:
And how about Banty's Proposal: have a nice school day, send the kids
home with Happy Halloween wishes. And partake of no PC Halloween
parties.

That would be fine with me too. I don't really like Halloween parties
at all, not having them at school would be just great as far as I'm
concerned.

There we have agreement.


But I don't see your desire to have either an ultra-violent Halloween
party or none at all, as having any more or less weight than some other
parent's desire to have a nice "PC" Halloween party that their kids will
enjoy. If there were more people like you, who dislike the parties,
than people who like the parties, then it would certainly make sense to
skip them. But I doubt that's the case.

It's not that I have a 'desire to have an ultra-violent Halloween' - it's that,
since costume preparation is a time-consuming and sometimes costly thing, to
pretty much require that kids have one for the school venue, with stated
thematic limitations, impacts what the home celebration would be, which may or
may not beholden to those limitations. I'm rather for unencumbered choices,
rather than any specific one.

So, if the school has to accomodate parents like you and limit the kinds of
getups the kids can wear, I'd much rather the school just stay out of it and not
get in the way of whatever folks want to do outside school.

If they want to do something such that I won't possibly end up having to
multiply efforts at home, like a Halloween essay - fine. They can require it to
be a very non-violent diversity-embracing socially-aware environmentally
sensitive essay if they want. ;-)

Another option would be a non-costume party. In my day :utting on my
bifocals:: costumes were out because of the school dress codes anyway.

Cheers,
Banty

I hear similar reasons for parents liking dress codes --
so they don't have to argue with their kids over what
to wear to school. Well, who is buying their kids clothes
that are inappropriate to wear to school in the 1st place?

In my experience, it's not a matter of inappropriateness, it's a matter of
decision making.... my DD is 9yrs old, and I still lay out clothes for her.
Otherwise she takes forever getting dressed in the morning because she feels
the need to try on twelve different things. She also doesn't check the weather
like I do, and she has a habit of pulling out short-sleeved shirts on days
where the high temp is 45F.

I think many of the parents appreciate
that the school doesn't allow very gory costumes, since they can then
tell their kids "OK, but if you really want that costume then you
can't wear it in the school parade."

We have the extra added benefit of "If you get that icky one, you won't be able
to wear it for Purim!"
Isn't it amazing how much Guinevere looks like Queen Esther? ;-)

Scott Lindstrom wrote in :
[snip]
hear similar reasons for parents liking dress codes --
so they don't have to argue with their kids over what
to wear to school. Well, who is buying their kids clothes
that are inappropriate to wear to school in the 1st place?

I don't think the two situations are quite equivalent.

If the school allows the kids to wear a custume, then you probably
have just two or three occasions to wear them: once at school, and
once (or maybe twice) out of school. So if you get two custumes,
the average number of times you wear each of them is 1.5 wears.

With clothes, you have plenty of chances to wear non-school clothes:
if your kid has a crop top they are not allowed to wear at school, they
can wear it every afternoon after school until they grow out of it,
getting an average number of wears to be about 365.

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three