At Baldwin High School they are starting to enforce the “no hat” rule more. Although some teachers do not care for it, there are still few that do enforce this policy. Why is this becoming a bigger controversy between teachers and students?

I believe this rule is not necessary for BHS. Students should be allowed to wear what they want without being told what they can and can not wear. The only exception to this would be during the pledge of allegiance, since it shows respect.

When a teacher chooses to tell a student to take off their hat, they would be disrupting class time, depending on if the student corporates or not. If the student does not corporate, then it will require the teacher to either take away learning time from other students or make it a big deal because it is a school rule when in reality the hat was not harming anyone. The only reasoning that I feel this rule should be enforced in a classroom setting, is when students are taking a test and if the teacher wants to see everyone’s eyes or if they do not allow headphones to be worn.   

Schools also say that they are a distraction to other students. I think this is just an excuse because in my time in school when a student was wearing a hat I never got distracted or found the hat to be a disturbance to my learning. If the hat becomes a disturbance to the student, then they could move to a different spot so the hat is not in their peripheral vision.

If hats are such a “distraction” there are types of jewelry, like bracelets that can make noise or dangling earrings. Another example is when staff members or students wear heels, or any shoe with some type of hard sole. These shoes make a clacking noise that you can hear from down the hall. There are also plenty of “distractions” in class, like the tapping of a pencil or a flip of paper, are we going to ban these things too?

This rule at BHS of “no hats” should be removed. The school does not have any actual evidence of why students need to take off their hats. Simply just that it is just the school policy and that is what they are being told. Taking your hats off before entering a building was a social standard set a long time ago. This is now the twenty-first century, things need to change and update as time moves on. Starting with the “no hats” in school policy.