The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1901-09-19
SHIRT WAIST TROUBLE.
Teacher Sends Pupil Home
to Put on a Coat.
The State Superintendent Will Probably De-
eide That Shirt Waist is Good Enough
For School Room.

The shirt-waist question has bobbed up
in the school
AS burning issue it is now taking
precedence over the wrlggling of the book
publishers about repositories.
The State Superintendent of Education
has had letter from a mother who has
son in a graded school in a town in
Piedmont North Carolina
The letter has in it the following oues-
tion; us it permissible in a public school
presumably for the education of the
masses, for principal to make an arbi-
trary rule on the subject of dress?" If a
boy is sent to school. clad in clean. whole
garments, with clean hands and face has
the principal any authority to send him
home for his coat when the temperature
Is such that every man in town is work.
ing in his shirt sleeves"
The letter continues with the state
ment that the lad in the case has gone
to school in Baltimore, New York and
Brooklyn without being sent home for a
coat, but that in the North Carolina
town in question such arbitrary and
tyranical rules are to be found"
Describing the clothing of her son, the
lady continues, II dress him in fresh
shirt-waists daily, without suspenders,
with neat trousers, belt, shoes and stock
ings. | submit that the child is properly
cald and that even if he were in rags
public school has no right to refuse the
boy chance for an education on account
of the lack of coat"
Because of the annoyance caused the
lady, she has Withdrawn her son from
fHn oh. .NNl
Toon shall have decided whether or not
he can be admitted without a coat. In
her letter she says that such action as
this ''does not encourage a New Yorker
to settle in your State to be obliged to
pass the censorship of a man who may
know how to teach but not necessarily
the final Tsar on the subject of dress or
fashion"
1t seems that the lad, who is in the
seventh grade, is the only one without d
coat, and that rule exists for seventh
grade boys to wear coats, though the
lady says that last year the same trouble
was had in the sixth grade. His mother
says that she considers his condition
much better than that of boys, who. while
suffering from heat pull their coats down
over their shoulders, expose their sus-
q
appearance.
She commends the school, but insists
that the parents have the right to dress
their children as they see fit, and that
such acts seem fit for a monarchy and
not a frelA country.
In closing her letter the mother says
that all the younger children of the
school are bare-legged. coatlcss and deco
rated with suspenders. She asks for a
decision from the State Superintendent as
to the extent of the authority of a school
master over his pupils dress.
Gen. Toon will today answer the letter.
He has not stated definitely what his
reply will be, but If his conversation on
the matter is an indication of his decision
he will say that the parent is the guar
dian of the child's dress, and that so long
as child is in decent apparel he is en-
titled to public school privileges, coat or
no coat, with suspenders or without sus-
penders