Spirit Week can get bent
Or, why Wacky Sock Day makes me want to run screaming from the building
If you are a parent of a school-age child, there’s a pretty good chance that the words “Spirit Week” fill you with nameless dread. Whomst among us has not been sand-bagged by a child casually announcing after dinner that “tomorrow everyone is supposed to dress up”? You get that familiar sinking feeling in your stomach — a combination of anger, annoyance and desperation — and, depending on your state of mind (and finances), immediately start plotting either a) a late-night Target run; b) a late-night load of laundry; c) leaving the country; or d) the demise of whoever invented dress-up days for school children.
For so many parents, “Spirit Week” just translates to more emotional labor: shouldering the burden of remembering that Tuesday is Twin Day so Monday you’re going to have to do laundry to make sure that the shirt your kid wants to wear is clean and then you also need to see if someone has a tie-dyed T-shirt you can borrow for Hippie Day on Thursday because somehow you have to dress this child up like a “hippie”??
I will say that my own personal relationship to Spirit Week is very loose, in large part because I have the privilege of having a kid who does not seem to care if she forgets that it’s Twin Day or Blue and Gold Day or Tie-Dye Day or whatever the hell. THANK GOD, she does not seem to feel left out or othered by these occasional, random celebrations. But I know that’s not everyone’s experience.
But even though Spirit Week does not cause me any personal stress, I deeply, passionately loathe it in a way that I have found hard to articulate. So I thought I would dig into it, and I’d love to hear what others think about it.
Why tf do we do this
Like so many other things in our schools, the idea of a “spirit week” seems to have trickled down, first from the college level, then to high schools, then middle schools, and now elementary schools and even day care centers (???!?!?!??!!) are in on it.
Despite my best Google efforts, I wasn’t successful in pinning down its actual origins, but I did notice that earlier references to spirit days, dress-up days and similar activities seemed to reference colleges and high schools, and less often the lower grades. For example, one can read about the “School Spirit Week” in the (virtual) pages of the October 1940 edition of “The Panther” of Prairie View State College in Hempstead, Texas.
“Pep Boosted During School Spirit Week On Campus,” the headline reads, describing activities leading up to a football game between Prairie View and Texas College in September, which seemed to mostly involve setting out placards around campus. The story vaguely indicates that “some type of pep activity was carried out each day” (no mention of Twin Tuesday or Dress Like a Meme Day here) to keep the students suitably pepped up throughout the week.
The theme of keeping up “pep” as a run-up to a big event was a common one that seems to persist; I found many contemporary references to high school “spirit weeks” that coincide with Homecoming or another athletic event.
“An activity recently held at Springport Middle School was Spirit Week,” wrote Ross E. Stephenson in the Middle School Journal in 1975. According to Stephenson, Spirit Week was proof positive of the benefits of an active student government. The activities, “held during the doldrums of March,” “provided exciting homeroom competition,” including tug-of-war, pie-eating contests, “and many other competitive activities held during regular physical education hours.” Stephenson emphasized the extent to which student government was fully in charge of the events as an asset of Spirit Week, suggesting that the experience of planning such events were part of the students’ social education. (Or, maybe, it imbued them with a sufficient amount of “pep.”)
But not all educators have been as enthusiastic about the concept. “At West Middle School, "spirit week" is regarded as an important fixture on the calendar and staff expend a lot of energy in its planning,” wrote Stewart Wood in a 1993 paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. “Unfortunately the special events set aside for the week seem to bear little relation to the curriculum or to furnishing the message that school can be consistently engaging of the spirit.”
I asked my 10-year-old what she thinks the point of Spirit Week is. She thought about it for a moment, and then offered, “Because it’s fun for kids?” And she may be right that this is at least the ostensible purpose of dress-up days. When I hear Spirit Week enthusiasts (many of them educators) express fondness for the event, the word “fun” almost always comes up. “It’s fun for the kids!” I hear them say, but you know what? I don’t know if I believe it. Spirit Week seems like fun, in an abstract sort of way, because what other possible reason besides “fun” could there be to dress up like your teacher, or a cowboy, or “the 70s,” or a meme?
Writing for the NASSP in 1988, education student Samuel Griffin describes the spirit week activities at one unnamed rural middle school as follows: “Bum Day, Clown Day, and Dress-Up Day encourage students and faculty members to break up the humdrum routines and put a little fun in the schoolhouse.” While Griffin’s overall evaluation of these sorts of student council-organized activities is positive, he does note that, “At present, student activities represent a ‘hidden curriculum’ in which intended learning outcomes are achieved in a haphazard manner.”
"On Tuesday of homecoming week, Cassandra Holbrook, the frazzled chief architect of spirit week at Grace High, broke down in class and sobbed, 'People don't understand! It's hard being popular!'
— “Rats Saw God” by Rob Thomas, 1996
There is, I think, another purpose for Spirit Week that undergirds the whole endeavor, and some of the clippings I dug up seem to hint at it. In 1986, Dr. Helene Mills, principal of Derby Middle School in Birmingham, Michigan, identified “participation in Spirit Week activities” as among her school’s performance objectives, under the heading “Establish feelings of community for school and greater society.” The plan was developed by a steering committee that included teachers, counselors, special education and parent input.
In this framework, “Spirit Week” becomes a sort of civic readiness initiative; a way to prompt students to think of themselves as members of a school community. This is, in and of itself, a worthwhile goal. But Spirit Week, from my vantage point, seems such a flimsy simulacra of what community actually is, or could be. Surely “community” does not mean “all dressing alike”? Surely it is not about what we wear, or how we do our hair, or what we select when we are encouraged to bring “anything but a backpack” to school?
Spirit Week, from my vantage point, seems such a flimsy simulacra of what community actually is, or could be.
When I was in junior high in the 90s, we had a Spirit Week that included, among other things, “Crazy Hair Day.” I remember asking my mom to help me put my bangs up into a tall tower using hair elastics — it sort of looked like a palm tree. We succeeded, and I was very pleased with myself. But the feeling that I remember having about going to school that day was not what I would call community. It was the same feeling I had on most days of sixth grade: a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety about the fact that people were going to notice me. This is the prevailing emotion I associate with early adolescence — not, in my experience, a feeling that breeds community. Of course, this is just my experience and certainly not universal. But I wonder how much of what we do in the name of “Spirit Week” — like so many other things that happen in schools — rewards those with privilege and excludes those with less.
And this othering has long been a part of Spirit Week and dress-up day celebrations — sometimes in very silly ways, and sometimes in ways that are very explicit and deeply harmful. (CW for mentions of anti-semitism and racism ahead.)
For more than 100 years, students at South Dakota State University have celebrated “Hobo Day” as part of their homecoming festivities. Full disclosure, my entire awareness of this event stems from reading the Wikipedia page about it and watching this video from 2020, so I may be missing some subtle nuance, but it doesn’t strike me as particularly inclusive fare. Activities during the run-up to Hobo Day have included a contest where men are encouraged to grow beards and women are encouraged to grow out their body hair (cute!), as well as a “beauty pageant” in which men dress up as women and are judged in swimsuit competitions (nice!).
When a West Virginia high school was criticized in 2015 for having a “Hobo Day,” some in South Dakota fretted that their beloved celebration would be next in the crosshairs for the “PC Police.” (Students in Roswell, N.M., complained about a similar event in 2016, and if you search for “Spirit week hobo day” you can see there’s been plenty of other controversies in recent years).
In West Virginia, school leaders responded to criticisms by arguing that “there is a difference between a homeless person and a hobo” (??) and “the event was not meant to make fun of people living on the streets.” Maybe not (???), but if that wasn’t the intent — what was it?
One could ask the same question of the sixth-graders in Missouri who, In 2008, created “Hit a Jew Day.” This disgusting event was part of an unofficial Spirit Week that also included Hug a Friend Day, High Five Day and Hit a Tall Person Day.
“This is obviously a deeply troubling episode in American culture, not least for the children and families targeted by this ritual, which reveals both the ongoing presence of antisemitism and a lack of cultural awareness about the problem,” wrote Catherine Chatterley, professor, Department of History, University of Winnipeg, in “The Yale Papers: Antisemitism in Comparative Perspective.” “However, to properly evaluate this possibility one would have to investigate whether any non Jewish children were also assaulted. It is telling that there was no Hit a Chinese Day or Hit a Black Day or Hit a Girl Day, although one can imagine that these were in the pipeline had this school ritual continued. The question that we should be asking is why in 2008 in Chesterfield, Missouri (a suburban upper middle class community west of St. Louis) the first ethnic minority group targeted for physical abuse by a group of sixth graders were Jews.”
Chatterley goes on to note that “The official response to this eruption of violent antisemitism was not to teach the children, or the larger community that socializes them, about the specific history of antisemitism, but to have the children study the Holocaust later that year.”
More recently, a mostly-white school district in my little corner of the world made headlines for hosting a “Gangsta Night” that saw students dress up in gold chains, sagging pants and other attire that upheld racial stereotypes.
“They may have been trying to imitate Blackness, but based on the Times’ description, it was the whitest sh** ever,” wrote Zack Linly for NewsOne.
“Gangsta Night” was a themed night at a school basketball game, not an event that took place during the school day, but nevertheless, the vibe is the same. (I should say here that as a college student, I absolutely participated in themed dress-up parties that were no less offensive than Gangsta Night. I just want to put that out there. When we know better, we can do better!)
Sure, there is a difference between your kid’s preschool doing Pajama Day, and harmful events like Gangsta Night and Hobo Day. But I also see a common thread connecting the two: Those with the most privilege are celebrated and rewarded, and those with the least privilege pay the price. Kids with privilege are the ones who get to have “fun” during Hobo Day and Gangsta Night. They can risk some of their social capital by being a little bit silly, unfashionable, or untidy, because it’s just a costume they put on for a few hours and take off at the end of the day.
At best, those with the least privilege are left out or unable to participate — or don’t have the social capital to spend on such a risk. Maybe they don’t have a Hawaiian shirt or wacky socks to wear to school. Maybe their pajamas are embarassing. Maybe their mom or dad or auntie or granddad or big sister didn’t have time to help them style their hair in a certain way or fashion a toga out of a bedsheet. But at worst, it is the least privileged students in the school who themselves become the object of mockery, the butt of the joke that everyone else is laughing at. That’s not my idea of fun — and it certainly isn’t how I want to build community.
Thanks for reading this installment of Think of the Children. I’ll be back in a couple weeks with my next, but if you or someone you know is writing smart, interesting stuff about parenting and schools, please be in touch — I’d love to speak with you! In the meantime, thanks for your support.