Beyond the Dress Code: Teaching the Hidden Curriculum Through Regulating Students’ Bodies

Recently, there have been a string of cases where students abide by the dress code yet school officials still deem them as dress code violators. To address this issue, I use theories on the hidden curriculum and cultural capital to examine how teachers enforce the dress code and what informs their decisions. Interviews with 19 teachers at two different high schools in a racially diverse school district revealed that teachers perform the roles of both the educator and the disciplinarian. However, their ability to regulate students are limited by the administration. Teachers rationalize their actions under the frameworks of respectability and professionalism. These frameworks draw upon dominant understandings of race, gender, class, sexuality, and embodiment. When teachers regulate students as a result of a dress code violation, female students and students of color are given lessons on respectability and professionalism. This study shows that teachers’ practices of regulation help reify the continuation of racial, gendered, and classed lines in high schools. Teachers adhere to anti-black middle class heteronormative values and attempt to instill those values in their students through the enforcement of said dress code. This is particularly harmful to marginalized groups in the educational system as these messages replicate androcentric, anti-black, middle class values.