Lakewood Girls Schools

Chayalle

Wed, Nov 30 2016, 10:13 am

To add to that, it's an issue when every child within one family is put into the same box. Anyone with several children will say that they are usually not all alike. Yet they all get put into the same box - er, I mean, school. If the schools are expecting them all to be alike, and if slightest differences and deviations are going to get magnified, it can create an atmosphere where an issue is made of a tissue, mountains out of molehills, and a child can feel lost in the system.

Where I grew up, there weren't any school rules about the color of shoes or the brand of boots you could wear. I'm just using that as an example of conformity that I admit to finding ridiculous. It's too much similarity expected, no space for kids who need it. No one said boo if you decided to wear a side pony one fine day.

One of the things I look for in a school is a little bit of space for different types. I consider it to be a more healthy environment for my kids to grow up in. Years ago, when my oldest was in kindergarten, Ziva Kriger A"H discouraged me from applying to a very in-the-box school, because, she said, "this is your oldest. You don't know what the rest of your kids are going to be like and what they are going to be capable of." Wise words.

amother

Wheat

Wed, Nov 30 2016, 12:57 pm

I went to a more liberal out of town school about 16 years ago - (I'm probably the OOT weirdo referenced to in some of the posts, but that is fine...)
Through high school we wore anklets, as longs as they showed above the shoe it was fine, black nail polish, listened to any music we wanted on school grounds, etc - the frummest and modern went to school together and got along.
There are 100s more rules now. In general the orthodox world is moving in that direction not just Lakewood.

I send my daughter to an amazing school, more yeshivish leaning, but so normal, this is the first year they had any rules about shoes, I was disappointed, because I really think this particular rule is silly, I'm not even sure why it was necessary....