If Jeans Are OK with a Jeans Pass, Teachers Should Be Able to Wear Them All the Time
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder points out the logical inconsistency of jeans pass policies — if jeans are professional enough to wear sometimes, they're professional enough to wear always.
Key Takeaways
- The policy contradicts itself - If jeans are acceptable with a pass, they're not actually unprofessional
- Jeans passes are about control, not professionalism - The real purpose is generating revenue or asserting authority, not maintaining standards
- Trust teachers to dress professionally - Adults don't need permission to wear comfortable clothes to work
Transcript
So I mentioned jeans passes in a recent video, and one of the comments brought up what I think is a really good point, that if it's appropriate to wear jeans when you have a pass, it's appropriate the rest of the time too.
And if it's not appropriate in your context, if it's a more formal setting and wearing jeans wouldn't really be appropriate, then a pass doesn't really change that.
And I think that reveals the truth that the idea of jeans passes is one that just obviously is infantilizing to teachers that it that it treats teachers not as professionals but as children who need little rewards like privileges that they should kind of have anyway and i think this approach to recognizing and rewarding teachers like the the intention comes from a good place but it's misguided in the sense that it can never recover that sense of professionalism that teachers need to have.
If we start off treating people like children and not treating people like professionals, no amount of goodwill or kindness after that point can get us back to where we need to be.
We have to start from a foundation of professionalism that sees educators as professionals, as people who can make professional decisions about what to wear, you know, within what's appropriate for that context.
And like this idea of just doling out privileges, like you get to skip a faculty meeting.
Like, why are we having a faculty meeting if people can skip it?
Or you can wear jeans.
Well, why can't people wear jeans all the time if you can wear jeans with a pass?
Like we have to treat people like adults if we want people to do professional work.
So let me know what you think.
Let me know what kinds of rewards or privileges you are seeing being used in this way.