I’m almost too angry to type.This poor kid had to flee his parent’s home and live with his sister because of their intolerance (talk about being devalued as a person) and specifically asked the school about his choice of wardrobe BEFORE he ever went to the school.
He was assured that there was no problem.
Now he finds that again, he is of lesser value than some bullying asshole who taunted him.
Another student got in a fight with the bully to protect this brave kid, yet the bully was not suspended or expelled.
Instead, a cop was called to the school to discuss Jonathan’s clothing.  Somehow, that conversation was deemed so dangerous that an armed law enforcement officer was required.
The Facebook page, while encouraging, will never give this kid back his simple human right to just be left alone.
There is discussion there about some sort of crossdressing protest – or wearing supporting T Shirts.
I’ve seen no response from any of the so-called “adults” involved.
God I worry about kids in these terrible circumstances – and hope that he has the help of good people.

I agree completelyAs a parent, I cannot understand this at all. And I also worry for him, his friends, and all other kids who are witnessing this and deciding they must always hide their true selves and will buy into the “devaluing” message this school is giving them.
What a horrible situation for all of these kids…

Same old, same old    Once more one of us is held accountable because someone else is a bigoted moron. One of us is made the scapegoat for someone else’s discomfort at diversity. And the real issue–the problem that really ought to be addressed–is ignored in favor of reinforcing conventional mores. Not really a “hidden” curriculum at all; pretty much right out there.
   Maybe irony is truly dead when people who’d no doubt protest loudly that they believe in “liberty” go to such lengths to narrowly define that liberty for others.  
   My fingers are crossed for that kid, & all our kids.

Typical high school experience, alas“If you can’t understand it, don’t try to understand it, just ban it,” has been the public school employee mantra for decades. While there are some gems here and there, the great lot of them are miserable little clock punchers counting down the days until retirement. Individuality requires actual work or creative initiative on their part, which if implemented would expose their utter lack of base competence when not following a workbook.
Yes, I’m bitter about my high school years. You should’ve heard me before therapy.

Yes, let’s embrace traditional gender roles and conformity!The next logical step for that school’s Assistant Principal should be to suspend all girls in his school wearing jeans, because everyone knows that pants are “boy clothes.”  Good and proper girls wear dresses, and if a girl happens to show a boy her ankles, then she should thereafter be known as the whore that she is.
/sarcasm
That’s the problem when you try to make decisions (or even worse, legislate) based on some misguided basis of morality and proper behavior.  The standards for what is moral and proper change over time, and what is deemed “inappropriate” today may very well be commonplace and even boring a generation from now.
This action, IMNSHO, is a complete and utter failure of this school system.  The approach that the authority figures took with Jonathan (which led to his decision to withdraw from school to remain true to himself) has done nothing to neutralize the taunting behaviors of the bullies that tried to intimidate and ostracize him.  They have only made the bullies worse.  Any idiot knows that you don’t stop bullies by validating their behavior — you take on the bullies directly and show them that their behavior is wrong.  And if their behavior doesn’t change, you punish the bullies, not the target of the bullying.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t public schools receive Federal funding?  If so, I fail to see why the reach of the Bill of Rights (which guarantees all of us the freedom of speech and expression) should stop at the school’s door.
This makes me so angry it’s hard to think and type coherently.  I have to say that, as an Atlanta resident and a current graduate student in Kennesaw, this type of thinking is way too common in those communities.  Cobb County is a very conservative area of the metro area.  And it’s all too fucking sad.
Anyone that uses a “boys do x and girls do y” line of thinking in making his/her decisions has no damn right being in a position of authority in a public school.  None.
If anyone his interested, please join the Support Jonathan Facebook group to lend a voice of support.

And this surprises anyone?

Another student got in a fight with the bully to protect this brave kid, yet the bully was not suspended or expelled.

When I was in 6th grade, a kid twice my size beat me up – including ramming my head into the floor – but because, at one point during all of it, I uttered a naughty word, I was deemed to be more at fault and so I was the one who was punished.
Did I mention that this was a baptist school?

I hated public school and still doMost of the “students” I went to school with were there only because the law said they had to be there, not to learn anything (this was 1976 – 1980) and this was in Fairfax County, VA where the average SAT scores are 552 in Critical Reading, 569 in Mathematics, and 543 in Writing and where 52% of the county budget goes to education, and where 87% of the student population graduate.  We were kept very busy excpet between classes, and I took as many classes as I could so I could graduate early.  I was always taunted, but found a group of friends (not out of course) who were serious about going to college and we stuck together.  I was a skinny kid, 5’10 and 125 pounds of nothing.  However, DC is a very transitive place so there was no entrenched custom or culture I had to conform to which was a good thing for me.  I just found the whole experience to be oppressive, paternalistic, repugnant and degrading.

agree tooThe classmates supporting him was the best thing I heard.
But it doesn’t take more than a few bullies, or foul parents, or even administrators to make it dangerous.

He wasn’t kicked outaccording to the article you linked to:

Escobar said the  assistant principal told him his style of dress had caused a fight between students at the school. Two days later, he withdrew himself from the Kennesaw school.

I don’t mean to nitpick, or appear insensitive to the force condemnation from administration would play on a young person, or that I think this situation is acceptable in any way.
But I think there’s an important distinction, at least because there’s no legal recourse if he withdrew. Presumably he could decide to return and let them kick him out, and we could have a test case for transgender rights in public schools. But not yet.

Sadly the bill of rights IS suspended at the school house door
Numerous cases have held that school officials have extra constitutional powers to pronounce edicts which confound the norms of society elsewhere.
They hold a form of positional authority which allows for such restrictions as no same sex dates at prom, declaring any political shirt or slogan “disruptive”, banning parents from coming on school grounds (even though their child is there) and a host of crap so bizarre as to remind one of the powers of the Inquisition.
Their mere whim carries the power of law.
They scare me.  A lot.
I and a bunch of like minded kids started an alternative program in our HS in the ’70′s.  We were the hippies, and wierdos.  I was advised to drop out in Sophomore year by an idiot Vice Principal (who I later interviewed for an article in the Boston Globe and showed to be an ignorant fool to the entire state).
Our program had no attendance requirement, held classes at houses or on the beach, and had guest teachers.  Among them were Edmund Gorey (Art) Kurt Vonnegut (Lit), a retired scientist who worked with Edward Teller on the Manhattan Project (physics), countless one off speakers from business and the community, and students were also active teachers.  I taught english and literature for 2 years.
Of these hippies and wierdos who couldn’t function in the factory drone machine, we had TWO kids get perfect 1600 SAT scores in the same graduating class (out of 8 of us) and for the first 6 years of operation, this program had 100% graduation, 100% college acceptance.
Not bad for a bunch of “losers and misfits”, eh?

In most American high schoolsconformism–of any kind, not just sexual–IS more important than education.  I graduated from Duquesne University’s School of Education, which is a more or less typical institution, and that was the unstated mantra there.  It was usually cloaked in language about “helping students become good citizens,” and of course in this country being a “good citizen” means going along with the crowd in every possible way.  When I and a few friends raised concerns about helping kids to realize their potential and fulfill their ambitions to become the people they wanted to be, we got slapped down and/or brushed aside pretty quickly.  Lip service is paid to that ideal, but good gosh, we wouldn’t want to carry a thing like that too far, would we?  Heaven knows where that could lead!  And questions about helping gay/lesbian kids were met with contemptuous disregard.
Granted, this was all some time ago (it’s not actually true, though, that Aaron Burr was my roommmate), and I know GLSEN and the ACLU have done valiant work at improving things for LGBT students.  But I don’t see much evidence that the overall mindset of teacher training has changed much–as this news story demonstrates pretty clearly.

This crap can be stopped – I am proof.The program I discussed above was modeled on the work of Jonathan Kozol – who also helped us design and start our alternative program.
Remarkably, while we had an open campus, free thought design, we were also active advocates for a military school style option for those who would benefit from that model.
All children and all adults learn in different ways.  The bell, walk, sit, bell walk sit bell walk sit model is nothing more than an educational cattle chute – designed after the Henry Ford assembly line model- efficient, controllable, and with an acceptable loss ratio.
I do not accept any loss ratio when it comes to children, and neither does Kozol.
I strongly urge all of you to buy, http://www.amazon.com/Alternat… his groundbreaking work on Alternative Schools, read it and stridently advocate within your communities for more diverse school models.
Quite simply, there is no reason any child should face the school day with fear or shame.

Kozol’s Wikihere:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J…
Remarkable man. This is a book I must read.  
I am a product of a fairly good public school system and was motivated in large part by a desire to be more than what I saw around me as a woman’s eventuality.
Having a father than has not read a book since the 1950′s, juxta-positioned against his father-in-law (my beloved Grampie and best friend/ Bridge partner), whose formal education ended in 8th grade yet read voraciously his entire life and was remarkably well self-taught on countless topics, I know all too well that a free thought approach to education is very possible and can continue throughout one’s life time.
I only wish Gramp could have read Kozol’s work; he would have been fascinated.  

being different is threatening to some…but it’s no excuseIt is minor, of course, to what this kid and others go through, but it’s a common enough story. Everyone raise their hand who went to a school where the dress code also included some mention of hair length and/or style. I’ve had short (as in, my hair doesn’t go past the collar of my shirt short) hair since I was 12 and it was always a contest to see what garnered more comment whenever the dress code came up (as it did nearly ever year), my  short hair or a couple of the boys who wanted to wear long hair. Because I could only learn my Shakespeare and quadratic formula while wearing ribbons in my hair, while at the same time, ribbons in their hair made it difficult for the boys to do the same. Logic, let me show you it.
In college I started wearing temple braids (now down past my shoulders, which is significantly longer than the rest of my hair) and I’ve had more than one manager and/or principal (I’m a substitute teacher and occasional aide) make sideways comments about them and a couple have even come right out and questioned whether I am ‘suited’ to the job. Yes, because my temple braids tote interfere with my ability to teach children how to read.
On bad days (okay, on good days as well because I can be an asshole) I wanna jump out at people and screech ‘boogity boogity boo!’ just so they feel justified in judging me on my (admittedly mixed and confusing) appearance.  

I was physically at High School but stoned much of itIt bored my tits off, and even then I was able to meet the B average, so my car insurance was cheaper.
I barely recall my Junior year of High School. Junior High School I got on the A/V equipment and could circle any hour of school on a pass to skip class. In grade school I had a dickwad male teacher who abused kids playing dodge ball himself, but if you didn’t have your homework in, you couldn’t “PLAY” so I kept my homework one day behind, and hung out with the girls I got accelerated with to another grade. They were way way advanced for their ages, their idea of fun on the beach in the summer (between 5th and 6th grade) was to read lurid paperback books out loud then check the erect baskets of the boys they attracted….LOL!

Sol,
ALL my teachers looked like you (except for Vonnegut – he looked weird) – and my hair went to my belt during HS.
Read Kozol…you will know that there is a choice, it is one of the most uplifting books ever written.  (132 pages total – $3.98 used – an hour very very well spent and countless lifetimes improved!)

I saw this yesterday,This kid is so brave, also his dress style is very, very nice. I liked it a lot. It’s very unfortunate that he dropped out after 4 days. I don’t know what I would’ve done, but kudos to him for standing up for who he is!  

Sounds a little like my father.I remember him reading two books my entire life – the buybull and Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative.

Another painful bullying story…..When I was back in third grade, I was facting a situation in which three kids made it clear that I was going to have to fight them at recess.  
I appealed to a teacher for help in stopping what was going to happen, and she told me”No, I’m not going to stop it. If you don’t want your faggot ass whipped be a man and stand up for yourself.
So recess comes and I’m immediately facing a three on one fight.  I have to quickly get the odd down to a one on one, so one kid got kicked immediately in the balls, hit a second kid with a raised knuckle in the eye and throat, then kicked him in the balls.  
I then focused my remaining fury on the remaining instigator to the point that he had a swollen eye and busted lip.
Now after the fun and festivities were over, guess who ended up in the principal’s office?
Moi, for kicking my tormentors in the balls.
Needless to say I had no more people trying to pick fights with me for the rest of the school year.

So when you learn that the only way to defend yourself is violenceand you do that as a child, how in the world does anyone expect children to grow up to behave any differently?  Sad comment on these adults that EXPECT VIOLENCE to be the solution to a problem.

I tip my flamboyant floppy feathered hat!I tip my flamboyant floppy feathered hat to Jonathan for making a brave stand against gender tyranny! I was routinely harassed for my gender expression and queerness throughout high school.

The most important thing in Western CultureBack about 15 years ago when making frequent visits to Albuquerque and area Native sites I read a couple books by Edward T. Hall on culture. One of the things that stuck with me is that the most important thing in Western Culture — more important than even religion — is the schedule. Even atheists insist on the schedule. The first thing parents try to get the newborn to do is settle into a schedule. It goes from there. One of the rudest things you can do is be late for an appointment. Before reading the book I would not have thought of that, but once I read it I knew it was accurate. I think this observation came from his 1976 book Beyond Culture, still available from Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-C…
So it makes perfect sense that schools have the hidden agenda of the school bell to get kids ready for the factory and cubicle.
Maybe someone should do research on whether the second most important thing in Western Culture is conformity.

Are they necessarily so separate things?In spite of some words to the contrary the emphasis on schedule always struck me as being about conforming to the expectations of others, just with respect to time and location rather than appearance, speech, etc.