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WEEK of March 10, 2008
@BFS! archives

For Brooklyn Teenagers, Some Things Never Change

by Jeffrey Stanley

One can only wonder what the entering Upper School class in the 1907-08 school year would think of such shenanigans as Guitar Hero, midday dodge ball and a school dance lasting until midnight if they could look in on BFS today.

Alum Director Susan Price ’86 unearthed some choice documents on the question including a 1908 New York Times article headlined “Special Spring Fashions for the School Girl” which delves into the do’s and don’ts of “party smocks,” (silk voile, marquisette and wash textures are recommended) including a warning that “a low-cut evening gown cannot or should not be worn before a girl comes out, certainly not until the summer previous.” Practical headgear advice includes the tip that a hat in a sailor shape “makes the most sensible style of everyday hat for a schoolgirl,” but laments that the look has become so wildly popular that “if worn at all must now be selected in only the most modified forms.” An alternative is recommended: “a style of hat that should be extremely becoming to a girl of 17 or 18 is formed of a huge tam o’shanter crown of net or lace, and bordered with a row of diminutive rosebuds half hidden in tiny ruchings of lace and net.” Got that, Upper School women? No mention is made of baseball caps or coming to school during spirit week dressed as Captain Underpants. (See “Who’s Counting? The Upper School Is. Students Celebrate 100 Days and 100 Years”)

Then there is the 1913 memo from Head of School Edward B. Rawson (photo at left) responding to a public discussion held at the school about “the dance question” and expressing concern that the discussion itself could have backfired and caused undue panic about the “possible evil” that a school dance might encourage. Up to a point his timely memo feels like it could have been written today. Expressing apparent sympathy for the students, he reminds the reader that “many young people do not know when they are dancing in a way that appears objectionable.” He cautions that leaving the dancing up to the students themselves may not be the way to go because “well intentioned young people...will quite innocently offend onlookers by merely doing what ‘everybody else does.’” However, in a surprisingly move Mr. Rawson goes on to suggest “the Annapolis rule—in force at the Naval Academy,” in which “the right arm of the man and left arm of the girl be extended and that there be at least three inches between them as they stand.”

The Annapolis rule may or may not have taken hold at the school but if it did, it didn’t last. A New York Times article from 1929 tells us that 11 private schools in Brooklyn, including Friends School, agreed to a code of social ethics drawn up by a coalition of distraught parents to “establish a sensible standard of social activity.” Chief among their targets were improper dancing, parties on Sunday, and attending more than one gathering in the same evening.

In a page that could have been ripped from the recent BFS handbook, the code also admonished students to “start home at midnight without stopping on the way for refreshments” because “social engagements will not be considered valid reasons for absence from class.” Some things never change.

The code also requested that parents acquaint themselves with the nature of current plays and movies, and include the name of the play or movie to be seen when sending out invitations. When younger students play games at parties, parents were instructed to supervise the games themselves rather than leaving it up to “professional entertainers” and advised that prizes be kept “simple and inexpensive.”

Dancing? Movies and plays? Parties? Games? Inexpensive prizes? Perhaps our Upper School forebears would have found dodge ball, Guitar Hero and doughnuts as a means of celebrating their legacy to be the cat’s pajamas.