Should public schools hold father-daughter dances, mother-son games? Is this an issue worth fighting?
Illegality aside, are father-daughter dances or mother-son baseball games at public schools a good idea? Why not just have family dances or games?
An elementary school in Rhode Island held a father-daughter dance last spring that led a single mom to complain to the ACLU, which protested to the Cranston school district. While the dance in question was held — and the mom escorted her daughter — the debate has been reignited by a candidate running for the state Legislature in Rhode Island. Inflamed by politics, the matter has entered a national stage, where most people are saying let schools hold father-daughter dances or mom-son games.
This is one of those education sideshows — the dance was done after school hours under the auspices of a parent organization — that attracts a lot of attention but has nothing to do with the core mission of schools. My husband and daughters have attended father-daughter dances, but never ones held at a public school. Do public schools in Georgia hold events limited to dads and daughters or moms and sons?
My own school holds breakfasts — dads and donuts, moms and muffins, grandparents and grits. Those events pass legal muster because there is no specificity to the sex of the students in attendance.
Because of the ACLU involvement and now the political hoopla, Cranston Schools felt obliged to publicly announce that it will not allow the dances, which, of course, has intensified the drama. The school committee has asked the General Assembly to approve an exception to Rhode Island’s sex-discrimination law so events for students of one sex can be held when an equivalent event is provided for opposite sex students.
According to a Providence Journal story last week on the school district’s decision to ban father-daughter dances:
Supt. Judith Lundsten said the move was triggered by a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a single mom who had complained that her daughter had not been able to attend her father-daughter dance.
Lundsten said school attorneys found while federal Title IX legislation banning gender discrimination gives an exemption for “father-son” and “mother-daughter” events, Rhode Island law doesn’t.
According to The New York Times:
The Cranston Public Schools Committee met Monday night to ask the state to create a special exception to a law they have cited in banning the dances. The law prohibits sex discrimination in “any and all other school functions and activities.”
By last spring, district officials say, a decade of turnover since the law was passed meant that administrators at Stadium Elementary were unaware of it, and the P.T.O. set out to plan the “Me and My Guy” dance, as well as a mother-son baseball game.
But a single mother identified only as Melissa complained first to the district and then to the state affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, which sent the school superintendent a letter citing federal Title IX rules that prohibit sex-specific events in educational settings unless “reasonably comparable” events are held.
“A dance for girls and a baseball game for boys, particularly in light of the stereotypes they embody, are not, we submit, ‘reasonably comparable’ activities,” the letter from the state A.C.L.U.’s director, Steven Brown, said. “To the contrary; the stereotypes at their core undermine the goal of school anti-discrimination laws.”
The district responded quickly, saying that the district had not approved the dance and that it would remind principals that it “does not condone gender-limited events,” as a letter from an assistant superintendent put it. In the end, though, the dance went on as planned and the mother who complained attended with her daughter.
It is not the first time Cranston has crossed paths with the civil liberties union. The city and the schools owe about $150,000 in legal fees after losing a lawsuit brought by the organization over a prayer banner that hung in Cranston High School West. The A.C.L.U. said displaying a prayer was inappropriate in a public school.
“After having to fork over the money because of the prayer banner, it’s like — the A.C.L.U sent us a letter, let’s run the other way rather than standing up for the kids,” said Richard Rodi, a parent. He was at the committee meeting Monday handing out fliers for Sean Gately, a Republican State Senate candidate who had brought up the father-daughter dance issue on a local radio show, stoking consternation among parents who had not realized there was a ban on such dances.
“Having those little father-daughter dances and seeing her all dressed up in her pretty dress — it’s a very special moment,” said Mr. Gately, who said the ban “offended me as a father and a husband.” “Nobody is being hurt by a father-daughter dance,” he said.
Some have been frustrated not by the ban but by the sharp back-and-forth it has generated here. “Let’s call this what it is,” said Joanne Spaziano, a teacher, “it’s political grandstanding.”
Most parents at the meeting expressed support for the school committee, which unanimously approved a resolution to ask the Rhode Island General Assembly to create an exception to its sex-discrimination rule and allow specific events for students of one sex when equivalents exist for students of the other.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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116 comments Add your comment
guest
September 28th, 2012
9:58 pm
I would like schools to hold “stupid people go jump off a cliff” dances, but that is not going to happen. These idiots need to deal with it. Life is not fair and others shouldn’t be made to cater to you bc your feelings got hurt.
Alex
September 28th, 2012
11:25 pm
We are raising a generation of whiners and losers! This country with a what is in it for me and my vote attitude is screwed.
South Georgia
September 28th, 2012
11:29 pm
How concerned are these idiots about sexually exploited children in Georgia? Unless they are fully involved in helping to eliminate that problem, I don’t want to hear them (ACLU) complain about a dance. How misguided we have become.
Eric
September 29th, 2012
1:01 am
Maureen, I’ve always admired your work, but this time I think you’re running out of things to talk about. This is a non-issue. Wish you’d research Carol Gilligan and get to talking about caring the schools and dis the mumbo-jumbo test scores, standards and the end of education living well in community, etc. not just makin’ a lot of money, etc. from the capitol’s views, etc.
tjatl
September 29th, 2012
1:36 am
Um, this is super easy. Our school has a “Small and Tall Ball” for the girls and whoever their adult escort might be.
Done.
OneEye
September 29th, 2012
2:10 am
Is anyone hurt by a father-daughter dance or a mother-son baseball game? Would anyone be excluded from the events? We really have much bigger things to worry about! Folks in Rhode Island must not have enough to do.
Wondering Allowed
September 29th, 2012
1:30 pm
@The Truth – You stated “I’m clearly smarter than you – does that mean I shouldn’t have been allowed to complete college or a master’s degree.”
I am sorry your intelligence limited you to a master’s degree. I’ve got both a masters and a JD from the university most would consider one of the top in the Southeast. (Dual degree program) My undergraduate degree is also from an top-name college. If you are measuring intelligence by educational attainment, you fall two or three years short and a significant degree behind me. As for what you are paid and/or your job, I’m probably with you or ahead of you there, too. Without knowing what masters you have, it is impossible to know, but a JD pretty much puts me at the top of the earnings heap. Nice assumption on your part, it’s just very, very wrong.
Truth in Moderation
September 29th, 2012
4:36 pm
“Aside: About the ACLU – recently the ACLU is being touted for its defense in the “rights to privacy” against Big Brother Government. It is for no other purpose than to gain popularity and induct new members. Here is an excerpt from an essay on the ACLU by William H. McIlhany. Notice from where the ACLU gets large grants of money.
“One reason why some prominent leaders of the ACLU have been so opposed to public and private investigations of subversion must relate to what such an investigation would reveal about the Union itself.
The ACLU was formed out of earlier organizations in 1920 and its Executive Director and moving spirit until 1950 was Roger Baldwin. Before he died at age 97 in 1981, his ideology may have changed, but during the early years of his ACLU tenure there is no doubt where he stood.
In the “Harvard Class Book of 1935, spotlighting Baldwin’s class of 1905 on its thirtieth anniversary, he was quoted as saying,
“I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control by those who produce wealth. Communism is, of course, the goal.”
He gave this advice in 1917 to an associate who was forming another group:
“Do steer away from making it look like a Socialist enterprise…We want also to look like patriots in everything we do. We want to get a good lot of flags, talk a good deal about the Constitution and what our forefathers wanted to make of this country, and to show that we are really the folks that really stand for the spirit of our institutions.”
It should not be surprising to note that Baldwin was active during the 1930’s in quite a few of the Communist Party’s United Front organizations – he was an officer of the Garland Fund, for instance – along with other ACLU leaders including Rev. Harry Ward, Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Clarence Darrow, Scott Nearing, Robert Morss Lovett, Arthur Garfield Hayes, Archibald MacLeish, and Oswald Fraenkel.
ACLU leadership also included identified Communist Louis Budenz, Robert Dunn and Corliss Lamont. ACLU activists William Z. Foster and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn would later become leaders of the Communist Party, U.S.A.
Since that time, the ACLU’s official left-leaning activism has only steadily increased. Some local affiliates of the Union have always led this crusade, such as the Southern California ACLU which had maintained on its Board identified Communist Party operative Frank Wilkinson.
While the national ACLU has not been characterized as a Communist front by any state or federal investigation since 1938, any doubt about its becoming a ’staunch defender’ of individual rights was put to rest in April 1976, when the ACLU National Board formally reinstated Communist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn “posthumously” in its ranks. Despite this partisanship, the ACLU and its affiliated tax-exempt foundation continue to receive substantial yearly support from the Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Field, and other foundations.”
Proud Educator
September 29th, 2012
5:05 pm
This is truly the sisification of America: give awards to everyone, don’t cut kids who try out for sports, ban dodgeball from P.E., parents wanting conferences with college professors, parents calling their children’s jobs to make excuses for absences…the precedence has already been set. What will our country look like in 10 years?
bootney farnsworth
September 29th, 2012
5:56 pm
I don’t have a strong feeling on this one way or another – except that penny-ante crap like this is why we’ve lost the public’s trust.
Pride and Joy
September 29th, 2012
8:28 pm
Rockerbabe makes the most sense. She says “The simplest thing to do, would be to have parents host the dance and let all the kids come. That way, no one is left out and no one is stigmatized. 50% of marriages in the country end in divorce, so that + kids who live with just one parent, need to have consideration. Growup folks, families have changes and so must the schools and their activities.”
EXACTLY. Just have a family dance. Your family comes. No one is excluded and everyone has fun.
THink of it thIS WAY — leet’s say you have a perfect family. Two loving male/femal parents and two perfect happy kids, a son and a daughter.
Now the mother son dance comes up — the father and son cannot come. It breaks up the family time. Why not invite all of them? What harm would there be inh letting the father and son come too? well none of course.
What GOOD does it do to exclude the father and son? Well, none of course.
Now let’s take the opposite circumstance. You have a single mom with her two daughters. Now NONE of them get to go to ANYTHING. WHY would anyone be so stupid as to plan a social event that deliberately excludes ?
It just doesn’t make any sense.
Be smart people.
This isn’t an event earned by merit.
It’s a social event. it is SUPPOSED to be fun.
Only a sadist would plan an event that is supposed to be fun and instead hurts.
Pride and Joy
September 29th, 2012
8:37 pm
To Another Comment — thank you for your heartfelt posts. I hope the other posters on this blog will read them and truly understand.
Pride and Joy
September 29th, 2012
8:43 pm
To Proud Educator — you miss the point — by about a mile.
Awards are earned. They are a symbol of effort and merit. You have a beef with “everybody gets a trophy mentalilty” and I understand that….BUT a mother/son dance or father/daughter ball is NOT a competition. It is not something that is supposed to be EARNED.
Quite the opposite.
A dance is a social event, or rather, it is supposed to be a social event. One doesn’t EARN the right to go to a dance. One doesn’t have to COMPETE to go to a dance. A dance is supposed to bring people together and to simply be enjoyed by….EVERYONE….
Maybe you cannot enjoy a dance meant for everyone because you simply don’t want to be near people who are not like you. Maybe you only want to go to a dance with people who are married to each other and only to each other and have children only with each other…
Good luck with that.
MOST married people ARE divorced. MOST.
MOST children live in single parent homes.
So when you have a father/daughter ball and a mother/son gathering…you are HURTING and EXCLUDING MOST people.
Is that what you really want?
It sure does sound like it.
Proud Educator
September 30th, 2012
11:09 am
@Pride and Joy: I definitely understand your point; however, this is not an exclusionary issue the likes of womens suffrage or civil rights. It’s a school dance! The point that many posters missed is that traditionally fathers have not been as involved in school functions as mothers or other parent figures. Think about the negatives that you constantly hear about deadbeat dads. Schools and other organizations have been actively trying to make fathers a part of the learning experience. Why take this away from us? As an educator it is incredible to see so many men at a school function that does not involve athletics.
I did go off on a tangent, but I felt that it’s a sign of the times upon us. We work too hard to insulate students from failure, defeat, and struggle. These things are what truly builds character. A lot of our greatest triumphs comes from failure. If a child fails at something you use that failure as a teachable moment. Comfort them when their feelings are hurt; it’s a human emotion, not an indictment of their self-worth.
What's Best for Kids?
September 30th, 2012
3:33 pm
I grew up without a father for most of my childhood. I don’t recall being sad about missing father/daughter stuff. Maybe I was, but in the grand scheme of things, I got to do a lot of things that other kids didn’t get to do.
As a married mom of both a boy and a girl, I truly don’t care one way or the other if they have father/daughter dances and mom/son games. I would go, but it would not be the highlight of my year.
This whole thing is silly. I’m more concerned with my children having good teachers and enough books, and a good solid curriculum.
Bigger fish to fry in education , people.
Wilbur
September 30th, 2012
8:04 pm
Whatever we do, please don’t have any event that might be popular or even imply a normative standard. By all means, we need to continue to fracture the social consensus that holds our society together in the name of the feelings of some. Soon, when there is nothing left to hold us together, you can write blogs and wonder why.