This is a tough one from my "What is a school to do?" series. A loving father, which is good, wants to be involved in his son's school. which is good, and wants to volunteer at one of his son's school activities, a camp, which is good. However, Dad is in a gang.
I don't know the details of the case, or the outcome; it is the underlying question or even dilemma which is interesting. The case comes from a few years ago in New Zealand where gang membership is shown by a kind of a uniform, which can be banned from the school, and by tattoos which cannot.
I suspect that the decision is based on the gang, what it represents and what it does rather than on the father. "Birds of a feather flock together" and "if you lie wth dogs you get fleas" mean that the two cannot be disassociated.
Perhaps the school has two concerns, firstly that the values and behaviors of the gang might present themselves at the camp. What happens if the dad and another parent or a teacher have a dispute? Could something happen to put children. chaperones, teachers and camp staff in danger? While you can take Dorothy out of Kansas, you cannot take Kansas out of Dorothy.
And yet, if dad is a good chap, would his presence then normalize or even glorify the gang and gang membership? If the school and/or the community has an anti-gang programme, dad's positive presence would undo all those efforts.
We teach our children not to judge a book by its cover, a person by his/her color or a teen by his/her clothes. Is membership of a gang really that different? Yes, in that gang membership means a commitment to its ethos, leadership, other gang members and the gang's activities. No, in that choosing a particular lifestyle does not make you the same as others who have also chosen to live in that way.
In today's world of Black Lives Matter, Defund Police and Karens, this is a complicated question. What is a school to do?
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