Pother

Midwestern parents and pedagogues have this autumn managed to raise a new pother, on the strenuous issue: What shall the well-dressed schoolgirl wear?

At Port Fulton, Ind., Mrs. Fahyma Allen marched off to court to obtain a writ compelling the school authorities to permit her daughter Virginia, 9, to attend school clad in knickerbockers. Twice daily for three weeks Virginia had been sent to the school door, twice daily been viewed with alarm and sent home by officials who were shocked to see her spindly extremities encased separately instead of draped in unison. Mrs. Allen, no stickler for fashion, no crusader for a moral cause, merely clung to her point that Virginia's education should not be interrupted pending the extension of her wardrobe.

At Grand Island, Neb., a Nazarene preacher's daughter obtained a decision from State Attorney General O. S. Spillman that the Grand Island school board could not compel her to participate in gymnasium classes, least of all compel her while doing so to wear a garment discountenanced by her father's church: bloomers.

At Genoa, Neb., high-school girls complained that their assembly room was chilly, whereupon the school authorities decreed that girls from the sixth grade up must wear skirts long enough to cover their knees, walking or sitting. Hazel O'Brien, 16, spunky, would have none of the rule. Relatives backed her and a legal action hung upon the school board's next move. Said one of Hazel O'Brien's less haughty schoolmates: "We'll look like the girls of the horse-and-buggy days. The boys will be drifting to other towns for dates."

Persons without children in school wondered what were the sentiments of people with children in school, who saw a despatch last week from Southshields, Eng., reporting that no girl or boy would be permitted to wear a finger ring in a Southshields classroom. Cause: a girl wore a ring to class, gazed at it, neglected her studies; other girls copied her; boys grimaced, whispered, copied too.