On Baseball Caps and Facemasks

Back in the classroom

Kids do not like taking orders from adults, especially if the orders do not make sense.

Adults do not like taking orders from adults, especially if the orders do not make sense.

However, if anything can be gleaned from these past two and a half years, it’s that nothing makes much sense, and yet many people continue to follow senseless orders, whether they like them or not.

Well, I’m now back in the classroom teaching high school English, and it’s been a pretty good start to the school year, even if I have to enforce a stupid policy that doesn’t make any sense, and then expect students to follow it. No, it’s not a mask mandate, those are done at this school, and for good. At the start of the school year, I learned of my new school’s Covid Safety Guidelines, and they’re absolutely fantastic. Because there aren’t any Covid Safety Guidelines. Zero. If a student tests positive, they don’t even have to report it to the school. They can come to school sick if they so desire. The one slide in the Back to School slideshow addressing Covid had a banger of a line: Covid-19 will henceforth be treated like influenza. Amazing!

Anyway, I’m proud to say that I never told a kid to “mask-up” in the classroom, but I have, at the start of this school year, asked a student to remove his hat, an innocuous request, really. It seems so silly that I’m suppose to tell kids who really want to wear a hat that they cannot wear a hat. They can’t wear a hood over their head either if they’re wearing a hoodie. Not while inside the building. Not during school hours. Unless for religious reasons - think kippahs and hijabs - students cannot cover their heads.

So, obviously, some students want to know why they can’t wear their favorite baseball team’s cap (or the one that simply matches their shoes that day.) The reasoning, provided by the administration, makes absolutely no sense, especially in light of the fact that there are a few students in the building - around one percent - who hide their faces behind cloth masks. The reason students can’t wear hats or hoods - the administration said over the morning announcements - is because they are a security risk, and teachers and administrators need to see faces!

Yes, that’s right. We need to see faces!

I’m laughing.

Are you laughing?

I guess these past two years and a half years only bio-security mattered. Nothing else.

Now, quite frankly, I don’t care much for this no hats or hood rule. Asking a student to remove their hat or hood is more of a distraction than just ignoring it. I typically say nothing if a student has a hat on or a hood up, though, because honestly, I hardly notice it. My last school - a private school, I’m now in a public school - did not have a dress code policy barring hats or hoods, so I’m not used to thinking about something so mundane. Also, I’m busy, you know, actually trying to teach, and the last thing I want to do is piss off some angsty kid who just wants to keep his hood up or keep his hat on. I’d rather not have to do my best Tony Soprano. I don’t want to have to ask students to take off their hats and then stare them down - impatiently - until they do. That’s no way to build rapport with students at the start of the school year, obviously.

But it’s easy to understand why Tony and Artie, in the above scene, are so bothered by the guy in the hat. Artie says that “it’s values today, standards are crumbling,” when complaining to Tony. They’re in a fine dining establishment, and wearing a hat defies the proper etiquette that Tony and Artie expect others to follow. Sure, one could make the argument that wearing a hat indoors - even in a school that the government compels students to attend - is a sign of disrespect, I suppose. But that’s not the argument I’m hearing at my school. The argument the administration made concerns security, and ensuring that faces remain visible.

Nevertheless, while not mandated, masks are still permitted at school. Only an infinitesimal number of students wear a mask, though. I’d wager none of the maskers genuinely consider Covid a reason for wearing one either. Socially anxious students don masks to hide their nervous countenance. It is indisputable that the students still masking up struggle with anxiety. These students cover their faces while the maskless students, the large majority, can’t wear hats or hoods if they want to, which rest on the top of their heads and does not cover their faces at all.

Make it make sense, please?

So, I’m waiting for a scenario to play out, where a student walks into a classroom with a hat on, and is told by his teacher to remove it. The student asks why and the teacher says for security purposes we need to see your whole face (which they can see anyway). The kid then takes his hat off and pulls out a bandana, which he wears over the lower half of his face like a bandit for the rest of class. The teacher says nothing, because, well, they can’t, I guess, since masks are permitted.

So while it looks like Covid is done with at my school, the remnants of all the insanity we’ve had to contend with remains.

Really, my school should just let students keep their hats on or hoods up, at least until they can articulate a good reason to forbid them.

I can think of plenty of good reasons to ban masks, though, reasons that go beyond the most obvious - so we can see everyone’s faces!