Column: Cross-stress: gender and public schools

For many parents of children in Missouri's Francis Howell School District, education is not in crisis until a man wears makeup. Never mind that public schools in Missouri recently took a major financial blow ($80 million in cuts), that 19 percent of the 26 percent of children who live in its rural areas are living in poverty or that teacher salaries are barely subsistence-level. A transgender chaperon supervising a fourth-grade field trip, however, is cause for alarm.

Or so thinks Patti Hight, who expressed her outrage after discovering that her daughter had been under the care of a "cross-dressing dad" while on a school outing. Hight told the Los Angeles Times: "This individual did not use common sense.... He did not think how this would confuse (the children)." Hight did not explain why none of the children on the trip remarked on the chaperon's gender identity, or even noticed it. Nor did she admit that the parents seem much more "confused" than the children do.

The actual circumstances of the ill-fated excursion hardly to seem to warrant such controversy, and here we find the danger of loaded epithets. Though the phrase "cross-dressing" has come to connote false eyelashes and platform stilettos, this man (whose name has not been released) was wearing a sweater and jeans. He kept his hair long and wore makeup, but all witnesses reported that he presented no distraction to the children. He consistently attended his daughters' recitals and concerts, scheduled parent-teacher conferences and volunteered at the school dressed as a woman for six years. Yet indignant parents have called for a "gender-appropriate" dress code for adults who work or volunteer with school children. Some have demanded that the school notify them if the man visits the school, so that they can pull their children from class.

To say that this father was not "using common sense" is inaccurate at best. He acted in accordance with his First Amendment rights, fully believing those rights would be upheld by the school as a public institution. He was not dressed suggestively or acting in a lascivious manner, therefore he adhered to the same codes of appropriate behavior as one would expect of a woman or man dressed in "gender-appropriate" attire. Most importantly, he volunteered to participate in his children's education when other parents elected not to. What about his logic is uncommon?

The issue here is obviously not one of "common sense" or of "confusion." It is one of public education and the limits of its protection. The public school system serves one purpose, and that is the education of the community's children. This applies to all children, regardless of social conventions. A public school has a responsibility to ensure that the children in its care are safe (physically and emotionally) and that they are learning academic skills according to state-determined standards. It is not a moral battleground. If moral instruction is desired parents can choose private school or home schooling as a more satisfactory educational option.

School board member Lisa Naeger responded to press inquiry by saying that "parents have a right to make a decision about how their children are exposed to these issues." To contest Naeger, if she is speaking of "rights" as legal terms, parents do not have the "right" to determine how children are "exposed" to complex social realities in a public school anymore than they would elsewhere. Exposure to myriad attitudes and social practices is inevitable in a world with an infinite number of competing value systems. Public education is a representative microcosm for that world. One does not have a legal justification to homogenize the public environment by infringing First Amendment rights, so long as the children in class are not harmed or distracted. Withdrawing a child from class every time a certain parent visits the school, one who has posed no previous problem at all, would seem to be much more of a disruption than his/her brief presence there.

Parents in these communities do have rights, even if they are more limited than some would like. They have a right to take part in their children's education, which means that a school cannot exclude a transgender parent from volunteering unless his/her presence is notably distracting. Parents also have every right to determine how they discuss moral, social and sexual issues at home and which values they promote. Children's rights, however, are really the paramount concern. They have the right to an experientially rich education supported by the enthusiastic participation of adults committed to their success. Next to that, wardrobe has little weight.

Bronwen Dickey is a Trinity senior. Her column appears every third Wednesday.