KoreaTimes- Students' skirt length a controversial issue

[anichion]

"Skirt-gate" in all its pervy glory, continues on....

Skirt length stirs controversy at schools

By Kim Tae-jong

Middle and high schoolgirls’ competition to shorten their skirts in line with easier dress codes is triggering a controversy over whether school desks should be modified to block the sight of their legs in classrooms.

In the past, under tighter school regulations, schoolgirls were forced to maintain their skirts’ length long enough to keep the hemline from rising too much above their knees.

But hemlines are shortening as liberal superintendents at municipal and provincial education offices have pushed for ordinances to liberate students from strict dress codes.

Gangwon Province Office of Education is looking to have desks with boards attached to the front of them supplied to all secondary schools in the eastern province so that schoolgirls’ legs cannot be seen from the front.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2011/05/117_86696.html

Well, having the desks that block the view of the students' legs won't keep boys and pervs trying to look up skirts while walking up/down the stairs.

I recall my co-teacher a few years back walking around with a ruler to make sure everybody's skirt was the proper length once every week. Dunno why she didn't check on other days- probably had better things to do.

This being the KoreaTimes, there will be an insensitive or downright inaccurate quote on the subject. Today's winner goes to...

“Shortened hemlines can make female students vulnerable to crimes, and most importantly it’s not the proper dress code for students from an educational point of view,” Kim said.

Yes, because rapists/child molesters go around town with rulers, only attacking girls whose skirts are <2cm above the knee...

[confusedsafferinkorea]

I do agree with some of what the OP says, but I must say, if you are going to have a uniform then it is not a fashion parade and I do think that some of the School's are too liberal with the length they allow.

I think a lady with the right legs looks amazing in a short skirt but is a school uniform the right occasion for that? I do think too, that a shorter skirt does attract attention from the wrong sort of man more easily than a longer skirt to be honest.

So, I am all for short skirts, but not on a schoolgirl in uniform. There is a time and a place for that, but not at school.  A sensible length (just above the knee) is called for.

[WorkingTitle3484]

In my school, I crackdown on the boys who wear their neckties anywhere far from their necks.  However, that's with the boys.

As a male teacher, I feel like I can't tell girls to pull their skirts down...because horror stories and awful visions of "Pervert Teacher Demands Schoolgirls Get Naked" are all that I see.  I've kinda had nebulous answers when talking to Co-Ts about this.

I respect fashion choice, but I don't think MS girls should be wearing their skirts mid-thigh while in school.  However, I feel like it's not my place to say it.

[AdamLim]

Agree 100% with WorkingTitle, I never tell the girls to put the skirts down but I really find it inappropriate at times, especially when some try to pin it up to purposefully be shorter. Same as you though, the boys with the slackened neckties get set straight all the time

[GreySZ]

I never experienced any major issues with skirt length in my school although I did see a couple girls have the measuring stick put to their legs. It is a little bit silly, but at the same time I believe schools in North America with dress codes also enforce a certain skirt length. I'm not sure if they use a ruler or not, but it seems like a legitimate issue.

[chrisplank]

It has been established on several (dozen) threads that Korea is approximately 50 years behind the West in social development.  That would place them right along the same spot the U.S. was in the 60's, with the youth fighting for liberation. My mom says that when she used to go to school in the 60's, girls hiked up their skirts too, and hallway monitors would come along and measure them.  The students would watch for the monitors and roll them back down, because if you got caught, they made you rip open the hem to lengthen it (of course you couldn't admit that you had intentionally rolled up your skirt, so you had to go along with it and ruin your clothing).

So really, I don't think its anything more than youthful defiance, and who really cares? Let them have it.

[eggplant_tyrant]

My favorite part about these kinds of objections (erosions of morality ) is that this would be a non-issue if the school uniforms just had the girls wearing pants. These girls are being told, through their uniforms, that they must be feminine and coquettish, but only within the social constraints agreed upon by their elders. Skirts that end a few inches higher are too sexual; pants are too masculine; long skirts are not an option because... they don't show enough leg? I don't know.
(I'm not about to say that it's not inappropriate for kids to hike their school skirts up to the point that you can practically see their underwear. It's just -- what do we expect to happen? Really?)

[siamagoo]

My favorite bit:

“As skirt hemlines have become shorter, many schoolgirls find it uncomfortable to sit on a chair,” Park Jae-seok, an official from the education office

Girls don't feel comfortable sitting in chairs? Make them stand. Problem solved. The girls who don't like standing in class can wear more modest clothing to school.

The article is short and definitely worth reading. My second favorite part is when they claim that the government will pay 850 million won for new desks to solve the skirt problem. Please tell me that's not true!

And Eggplant-Tyrant: I just clicked the (non-existent) "like" button on your post. Your evaluation is spot-on!

[anichion]

Why don't the girl's parents just buy skirts that aren't in "ecchi" territory? The girls aren't buying the skirts themselves (unless they got some kind of part-time job) so this problem can be cut off at the knee at the home.

I remember hearing about a similar problem stateside, though I don't know how it was resolved since it was a while ago.

[Damien]

I teach at an all girls school, so they don't try to shorten their skirts at school. The issues comes RIGHT after school. Teachers patrol the area around school to catch the girls. They put on a second skirt to make it tighter or they change into their second tight skirt. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a girl come into class with a jacket tied around her skirt because it ripped. I would prefer if they changed to pants. Only 9-10 girls wear pants at school and almost all of them are the mentally challenged students.

[ninnik]

Apparently you can either do post-Korean war style skirts, or, mini-skirts/raised skirts... no in-between!  However, spend all that money for desks that block out legs?  HAHA insanity!

[rampancy]

I'm amused that it's apparently only just now that people are starting to be concerned about skirt lengths. No one seems to bat an eyelash that underage girls are parading around in skirts short enough to make the skanky Catholic schoolgirls back home blush, I can't wait to see their reaction if they start wearing anything showing off their shoulders or their cleavage.

[confusedsafferinkorea]

South Africans will understand this....... ' Die kop is toe, maar die gat is oop'   

[nzer-in-gyeongnam]

I teach at an all girls school, so they don't try to shorten their skirts at school. The issues comes RIGHT after school. Teachers patrol the area around school to catch the girls. They put on a second skirt to make it tighter or they change into their second tight skirt. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a girl come into class with a jacket tied around her skirt because it ripped. I would prefer if they changed to pants. Only 9-10 girls wear pants at school and almost all of them are the mentally challenged students.

I agree with this post! I also teach at an all girls middle school. Some of my girls DO wear shortened skirts to school, but there is a teacher who has taken it upon himself to start slapping the students with a stick if their skirts are too tight or too short. Instead, now, I see MANY of my students wearing 2 skirts, OR wearing the longer, looser skirt to school, and then once on the bus or down the street from the school the tighter, shorter skirt is pulled on. Many of the students who do this are middle school 3rd graders.

There are a bigger number of students at my school, however, who do wear the trousers, as they prefer trousers to the skirts, but still bring their skirts for PE days so that they can slip the skirt over the trousers, drop the trousers, put on the track pants and then drop the skirt again.

As for the skirts being too short and the government planning to put boards on the front of its desks, why not enforce skirts that must be mid-shin length again? I see some schools where that is the norm around here, and in winter, the students wouldn't be suffering the cold so much if they wore skirts at this length anyway. Coming into summer, the students skirts are likely to get shorter still... I am dreading the length that some of my students will try to get away with.

[ivana221648]

I think that changing students' desks is a little rash. Wearing short skirts and shorts seems to be the norm here and somewhat culturally accepted. As long as you don't show your shoulders or chest, you're allowed to wear shorts that could pass for underwear. So I doubt that these fancy desks would even make a difference.

[gookway]

If only the Koreans knew what "short short shorts or skirts" means in the Western world.  I always think I'm seeing prostitutes, but then i have to remind myself this is the cultural norm? 

I personally think long skirts are much more classy and elegant.  Mini-skirts, while "sexy" is just too "trashy" at the same time.

[peasgoodnonsuch]

I don't think concern over skirt length should be discounted as merely "old-fashioned" thinking. Now, I'm all for individual expression with clothing, especially for teens. However, as educators we must take into account that this is the age that these girls are coming into their sexuality. It is our job to enforce limits, and the students' job to push them. Also, the line between child and woman is one of the most attractive to many (think how successful the little girl gimmick that Girls Generation or Orange Caramel puts out is), and makes them a greater target for harassment/attention that they are most certainly not ready to handle.

I think it's important that girls at this age are provided with a safe environment to explore and test out the limits of their sexuality, and I think it's natural that they will do so. However, I don't believe school is that place and I think it's better for educators to toe a more conservative line. If given no limits, I think these girls will actually have a harder time defining their own sexuality than if they were given limits. They don't fully understand their own sexual attraction to others or the import of making themselves look sexy, and its very easy for them to take it too far. I think there is a big difference between looking sexy and looking grown-up, but teens often don't understand that difference. As people who have gone through this stage ourselves, I feel that it's our job to help these girls understand more about it by pushing in the opposite direction of the one they are inclined to.

I think the desk idea is an utterly ridiculous waste of time and money. The best solution is to just get rid of uniforms altogether. I'm sure most of my girls would wear skinny jeans nearly everyday if given the chance.

I also don't think short skirts can be discounted as less sexy just because it's more acceptable here. It's more acceptable because looking good is a more important social value here and Korean women know the best way to accentuate a petite flat-chested figure with shorter, thin legs (which I'd say is the average body type here, while admitting many exceptions to it).

[johnkim]

the desk is the dumbest idea i've heard so far.

I've been reading some posts and came across some REALLY interesting topics...
Like the idea that Korea is far more advanced than most of the world when it comes to technology, but socially, Korea is at least 40 years behind.

In my opinion, Korea will change a lot in the next 30 ~ 40 years. A lot of the old people who are in charge of everything will pass away, and a new generation will take charge of Korea.
I have a feeling Korea will become the next Singapore, where everybody will be able to speak English,
 have a crazily advanced technoly and a very accepting society.


I came to another interesting thought... That teenagers are of the age where they express their own fashion, etc.... In my opinion, Korea don't really have individualism. Everything is a trend, everything HAS to go according to the fads and if you stick out, or you're not of the trend, you're not part of the group... or the society. It's pretty ridiculous. I almost feel bad for people who live in Korea and I feel Koreans are one of the most materialistic people because of this trend.

Anyhow, I need to start lesson planning....

[meggie107]

South Africans will understand this....... ' Die kop is toe, maar die gat is oop'   

hahahaha brilliant!
Sometimes things are just better explained in Afrikaans

[pyeager]

We just had sexual harassment training at my school. I made the mistake of wandering by the library...and BAM!...the Dean of Educational Affairs told me I had to go. While I overall found it quite amusing, we were told that men should never look at a woman's legs or chest. I think the picture indicated that we shouldn't look at their faces either, but I didn't hear that mentioned explicitly. Anyway, if you're a man and you have noticed the skirt length of your female students, I do believe that you might be guilty of sexual harassment! Stop looking!

Seriously though, it's gotten pretty ridiculous. I agree with most of what's been said here, especially with peas n' such. It's the students' job to push the rules and the teachers' to enforce them. If no one is going to enforce irregularities in the uniforms, what's the point of having a "uniform" at all?