An Illinois school system is taking a lot of heat for its student dress code — one that mandates the kids cover up distracting body parts during the school day in the interest of learning.

Students of Freeburg Community Consolidated School District #70 showed up for class registration last week and were hit with sensible new standards for school day attire. Freeburg Superintendent Tomi Diefenbach had felt there were too many dress code violations last year, according to NBC affiliate KSDK. So this year she clearly explained what students can and cannot wear.

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Gone are the baggy pants and pajama pants for boys, the short shorts and barely-there spaghetti-strap shirts for girls, and the sunglasses for anyone. Gone are T-shirts with offensive messages or any clothing that promotes drugs, alcohol, or tobacco.

Interestingly, however — some alumni have a problem with this. Alum Audrey Proctor, for example, disagrees with the higher standards.

“I think it’s taking a step back from what most girls are trying to promote these days, which is being able to wear clothes without our bodies being sexualized,” Proctor told Today.com. “They’re teaching young girls to cover themselves up at a time when they should be expressing themselves and finding who they are.”

What? How do students “find” who they are by wearing revealing clothing during the school day?

dress code
The new student dress code disallows overly revealing clothing that distracts from education.

Proctor thinks the phrase “reflect respect” printed on the bottom of the flyer is unfair.

“No matter what a fifth- to eighth-grader is wearing, a teacher or administrator should respect them,” Proctor told Today.com.

The problem is that this type of thinking, which runs straight through to college-aged young adults, focuses on the “respect” that’s owed a student, rather than the respect from the students that’s owed to teachers, administrators, and the entire educational system and process.

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“I have seen teachers literally cringe at a girl in the front row with a low-cut shirt and short shorts,” one New York high school student told LifeZette. “It’s too distracting — and honestly, leggings are too, in their own way. Even moms are wearing those now.”

[lz_table title=”Dress Codes in U.S. Schools” source=”Niche.com”]

School-issued uniform,10%

Very strict dress code,14%

Moderate dress code,48%

Very casual dress code,26%

No dress code,2%

[/lz_table]

Another parent relates to the lengths kids will go to dress inappropriately.

“I found bags of girls’ clothing in my basement several days in a row when my oldest was in ninth grade — and I have all boys,” the Boston-area mom said. “It turns out one young lady was slipping in our side door early in the morning and changing from her school clothes to much more revealing attire — with my son as her accomplice. He left the basement door unlocked for her. I stopped that but quick!”

A reporter, Rebecca Sheehan of KSDK, posted a photo of the Freeburg flyer to her Facebook page, reported Today.com — where commenters, many of them parents, were wildly outraged by the new wardrobe rules.

“The bottom half of the page is insulting,” wrote one commenter.

“This isn’t the 1950s,” posted another. “We shouldn’t be teaching girls to alter their dress as to not ‘distract’ the boys.”

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But educators who actually work with students every day disagree. The way a student dresses reflects many things about that person, said Arvin Vohra, a Bethesda, Maryland-based author and founder of the Vohra Academy, which offers classes via Skype to grades 3-12.

“At minimum, dress codes are a reminder to students that they are in school for the serious work of education, not just to mess around,” he said. “School should prepare students for success in business, politics, and other parts of the professional world. Dressing like a buffoon or a tramp reduces opportunities,” he noted, “and dressing professionally increases them.”

“School is a place of self-development — not low-grade self-expression,” said one educator.

While feminists promote styles of dress (or undress) as markers of personal freedom, Vohra said true freedom lies in reality, and the acceptance of healthy societal norms that put focus on the mind and not the body — something women everywhere say they want.

But is it freedom and respect girls who dress provocatively really want — or attention?

“For adults, freedom comes primarily from economic success,” said Vohra. “A dress code that prepares you for economic success will give you much more freedom than a dress code that allows you to broadcast base desires. School is a place of self-development and self-actualization — not low-grade self-expression.”

In short, freedom and expression come from the mind.

And while “certain types of self-expression are inherently connected to the process of education,” said Vohra, “others are not. There is a world of difference between a student writing a controversial piece in a school newspaper, which we would allow, and a student advertising his love for beer on a T-shirt. Some types of expression are part of education — just as many are not.”