Chapter 88: Nudity in School

“Thanks, Tamara. Let’s change topics now to one that should be less troublesome; that is, if your sensibilities were disturbed by Tamara’s look at the biblical Eden story. But you should know that her presentation agrees with the interpretations of many highly respected biblical scholars and theologians from various denominations. So we’ll move on now to my field, psychology. Even though I plan to specialize in clinical psychology, my studies have covered educational psychology too because many children’s problems come from difficulties in school caused by emotional and socialization issues, different rates of maturing, and even clinical pathologies which may appear. In our own school-planning group here, we don’t believe we have the solution for all children’s problems in school, but we think that our approach can be useful in educational practice.

“Our prospectus shows that we’re creating a nudist school. Why do we want to create a nudist school? There are several major reasons which we’ll discuss now, and all are based on proven psychological research and observations. Some reasons fall into the academic or scholastic realm and others, into the physical education realm.

“Let’s deal with both of those reasons together because they’re almost inseparable when dealing with younger children’s education. Our school will be closely associated with the nudist resort next door and part of the school’s physical education and science programs in the lower grades will take advantage of that association. There are dozens of educational and psychological studies which demonstrate the positive effects of exploring nature on child development. When a child is given the opportunity to explore and to play in nature, it’s simply an affirmation that humans are, in essence, a part of the natural world, and children will always gravitate to activities which allow them to explore their surroundings. This is not only a physical need, it’s an emotional, intellectual, sensory, and cognitive need as well.

“Every adult has seen children playing at the beach, in water, like a stream—even in rain puddles, or in the woods. It seems that there’s a genetic imperative for them to play in nature, spending interminable amounts of time using objects which they find to build things. They’ll use branches and broken tree limbs to make a fortress. A large carton—or an opening under a bush—can provide hours of play like that. Rocks and stones can dam water flow in a stream—or puddle—any kind of water. And because this kind of play always soils or soaks clothing, or both, with cooperative weather and where social taboos don’t exist, children’s playing nude will invariably result. Our school will provide a safe place to allow that kind of exploratory play.

“What does educational psychology tell us about letting children explore nature through their play? Plenty of studies exist which clearly show that such children benefit by developing more robust cognitive, social, and emotional skills than those who are deprived of such play. Even better, children’s educational development is improved by spending time in nature. A dramatic example of psychological improvement can be seen when working with kids who have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. When they are allowed to play in nature, such children exhibit significant improvement in their ability to focus. Our plan is to incorporate the natural world and children’s zeal for exploration into an elementary education program.

“For the older children and teens, a different kind of play becomes important, and we’ve seen just how significant this is very recently as more schools begin to adopt the Avery-Denison Program into their curriculum. It’s set up to be part of the P.E. program but it’s much more than just physical education. The emphasis of the Avery Program is directed toward interpersonal cooperation and team building through solving physical puzzles. It gives teens experience, in a structured setting, to learn to set personal boundaries, to cooperate with others to achieve goals, and to learn respect for others; also, it provides a way for the participants to become fairly intimate with their chosen partners. By intimate, we mean socially, not sexually. From reports from all of the schools which have adopted it, the program has been hugely successful. Kevin will speak more about the Avery Program in a few minutes.

“What I want to cover is the current state of education in dealing with the social and emotional maturing of children. Sad to say, there is no current state. One of the most fraught issues among pre-teens and teens is body image. This is especially true among girls, but boys are certainly not immune from feeling that they don’t measure up to some imaginary ideal. Body image plays an enormous role in a teen’s self-esteem. During the pre-teen and teen years, their bodies undergo immense changes and so do their minds. Physical development occurs, growth spurts happen, hormones rule behavior and thinking. And all this activity has a different timetable for each individual. Teens see others ‘ahead’ of them in body development and feel inadequate. A body part is too small, too big, looks wrong, is too different. Self-image is destroyed by obsessing over an imagined departure from a nonexistent ideal.

“The media fills children’s minds with advertising, movies, social posts, and other propaganda which idealizes a particular human form. And their peers add to those issues by affirming how important it is to emulate that imagery. Here are some disturbing statistics which I’ve accumulated for teen girls, simply because far more psychological research has been done on teen girls than boys. Even before girls get to age 13, as much as 25 percent of them will become clinically depressed, exhibiting symptoms like self-harm, eating disorders, anxiety, irritation and temper outbursts, lack of motivation, and other similar symptoms. Virtually every single teen girl—close to 100 percent—admits to experiencing immense peer pressure to look a certain way, to the point that more than two-thirds of them feel that they’re deficient in some way, particularly in their appearance. And by age 17, close to 80 percent of girls report that they’re unhappy with their bodies. The intense modesty that society has taught our children—I’m speaking of our schools here too, as well as parents—provide no alternative imagery to the idealized examples which our media provide as a comparison for our teens consider as alternates.

“As educators, I’m sure that you’ve personally noticed these problems with teens in your studies or even in your own contact with students. But all is not lost; those statistics I mentioned cover our country’s general demographic but it doesn’t include girls—boys too—who were fortunate enough to be raised in a nudist or naturist home. For the purpose of this discussion, let’s just say that any distinction between them is immaterial.

“Anyone who experiences social nudism finds that being nude with others in a social setting feels a certain empowerment, and the lack of clothing is actually an equalizing experience. Without clothes, no markers of social status exist. For teens, that removes one major source of issues over self-image. Parents of young children raised as nudists notice in their children a certain self-confidence that is unmatched among non-nudist children. At nudist clubs and resorts, we typically see that our children interact with the other nude children far more openly than when they are in what we call a ‘textile’ environment—textile referring to those who are wearing garments.

“At our clubs and resorts, we also see that age barriers between children seem to break down; that is, children seem to play together based on mutual interests and not physical age. Without the social barrier of clothes, children act naturally, and the older ones seem to enjoy mentoring the younger ones.

“And we’ll finally address the body-image problem. Hiding behind clothes makes the human body a mystery. A child, especially a teen, wonders how he or she stacks up against others. So they try using the internet to find out, and wind up on pornographic sites where they get the worst possible exposure: to disrespectful human interactions, deviant sexuality, and poor body image. At nudist resorts and clubs, even nude beaches, our teens very quickly see that their own body looks virtually the same as everyone else’s body. There’s no mystery and no shame either. People whose bodies may be less than the media’s idea of ideal don’t really care about that imaginary ideal. And our children learn how the body’s appearance changes as people grow from childhood to old age.

“This is why I said that children of nudist homes have few of the social and emotional problems that textile children experience. Our school will be the site of a passive study of nudist child development and will allow our teachers, who will be participants in the study, to see if what we learned informally from observing children’s development in our resorts also occurs in a more structured school environment.

“Our final presentation will be from Kevin Coris, who’s had the distinction of being the educational product of countries around the world—seven of them, I believe. Nine if you include the three U.S. states where he attended schools. Kevin insists that his experiences in the different states were almost like he was living in different countries.”

Laughter.

“Even though he’s a doctoral candidate in political science, he has a master’s in educational psychology and was one of the developers of the Avery-Denison Program. Kevin, what pearls of wisdom can you share with us?”

Kevin walked over to the podium.

“Golly, you two will be hard acts to follow,” he remarked. “Tamara mentioned how nudity—not nudism—was the objective of the Naked in School Program. It failed terribly, as you no doubt recall. That program certainly was a major disaster to education over the eight years or so that it was running, and the negative effects on society that resulted from how teens were treated in that program are still reverberating.”

Most of the listeners nodded at that.

“And I believe that you’re all familiar with the alternate program, the Avery-Denison Program, which was introduced as a university class project as a direct response to the NiS program,” Kevin went on. “The Avery Program’s been very successful where it’s been introduced. And although most school districts or states have been slow to adopt it, mostly as a backlash from a reluctance to get involved with yet another social project running in schools, the early results from schools which have adopted it look really favorable. You are familiar with that program, right?”

When the listeners indicated that they were familiar with the Avery Program, he continued.

“Because so few schools have adopted the Avery Program, educational and psychological studies of it have been slow to begin, even more so because of limited financial government resources. Politicians are gun-shy now about doing anything to support social programs in schools. But some small studies have been done and they seem to show that when the groups who participate in the Avery Program do so as high-school freshmen, the social results appear to be far better than when the students are seniors—in other words, the younger they do it, the better.

“What I want to propose here is to bring a similar innovative educational project to an earlier period in childhood education. But before that, I want to point out that despite the total failure of the Naked in School Program, nudity per se in schools is not harmful to the students. In fact, reports from schools in naturist communities have shown very favorable educational results in both children’s performance and behavior too. True, this is based on very tiny samples—just two schools.”

There was some background chatter from the group but most seemed to be interested in hearing more.

“Barbara told you some details from psychological studies of teens and children, so I won’t repeat what she covered about the vital connection to nature that children need to experience for their well-being. But to review the idea underlying the Avery Program philosophy, it’s about learning respect and developing empathy for others and that program teaches methods to break down social barriers between people so that they can connect at a deeper, more empathic level. But as it’s currently designed, the Avery Program starts after a child has gone through puberty and we know that some of the exercises that the Avery Program include tend to promote a sexual attraction among participants. Although this hasn’t been a problem, since the program provides for appropriate supervision and teaches respect among the students, my group here believes that some of the things taught by the Avery Program can mask some fundamental issues in a child’s psycho-sexual maturation.

“Let me engage in a little existentialist philosophy now, because it has a bearing on what I will be proposing—and I like to show off a bit too.”

Laughter.

“The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas wrote extensively about the development of interpersonal relationships. He believes that relationships are abstractions. In one of his works, Totality and Infinity, Levinas suggests that people see each other not as individuals or physical entities, but as abstractions of thought. People don’t do this consciously, of course. But he believes that, in a face-to-face encounter, one person senses the other person as an exterior abstraction of a personality construct. In a way, then, this abstraction may be sensed as being vulnerable or even defenseless. We might think of this in concrete terms if we consider a real-world example. In bald terms, physical nudity itself can be seen as the embodiment of vulnerably and defenselessness, but in personal interactions, that vulnerability is concealed by the cloaking of normal propriety—civil behavior and respectful discourse. Social convention demands this.

“Levinas believes that in interpersonal encounters, the people involved acquire, in some way, a form of responsibility for one another. It’s the responsibility of effective communication, among other things. When this connection has been achieved, Levinas believes, the barriers which divide the two interacting people tend to drop and a kind of bonding occurs. Those barriers that fall can be viewed as the uncloaked essence, the nakedness, of those who interact. It’s the metaphorical nakedness that results from the exposure of one’s essential being to that of another person by sharing their interactions.

“Moving to a practical viewpoint, because trying to connect existentialist philosophy to the real world is sort of difficult...” there were chuckles “ ... but in a nudist resort, we can see the effect Levinas describes first-hand. With their clothing shed, the interactions of people are more direct and intense, more open and friendly. Total strangers greet each other as friends and communication is open and thoughts are freely shared. Why this is so, may have many reasons. Does clothing produce a psychological barrier or armor? Probably. Does it give economic signals? Definitely. Is it the openness an expression of the freedom of a shared experience? Possibly. These issues might be part of the answer, but I believe the essential reason is the one proposed by Levinas. And those ideas really begin when children start to become socialized—that’s when they begin school.

“I, and most other nudists, believe that social nudity doesn’t sexualize people. What sexualizes people is the suggestive, revealing fashion designs and commercial and entertainment marketing practices which are designed to be titillating, enticing, and alluring. Naturists believe that the whole idea of social nudism is that if you conceal your male and female parts from everyone, of course nudity will develop unwanted attention and sexual connotations. But we believe that hiding one’s body is unnecessary and psychologically unhealthy. If people are accustomed to seeing others nude and being nude in their presence, then people will obsess about sex less, not more.

“Children come to nudism very easily, as I’m sure most of you know. What you may not know is that, raised in a social nudism environment, teenagers who see each other naked are much less obsessed and anxious about their body image than other teens who grew up in a textile environment, and many of those textile teens seem to obsess about trying to see the other sex naked. Barbara spoke about that at length.

“Sorry for being so long-winded, but those points I mentioned are very important. What our charter school group plans to do is to create a naturist school based on using the Montessori principles, from kindergarten to grade twelve, on property one of our foundations owns and is adjacent to a nudist resort. Our idea is to take the social aspects of social nudism and apply it to the socializing part of a formal education program, including the principles of respect and consideration of others that’s the basis of the Avery Program, to enhance the socialization process. We plan to enroll children from nudist-naturist families primarily, but will also accept children from non-naturist families after an evaluation of their motives and home life. I know this is a lot to digest, but I’ve already met with some of you privately to work out some technical details, so those folks here know something about this project. This is the basis of our plan. Thanks for your attention. Anyway, it’s time for your questions; are there any?”

Lots of hands went up.

“I found Miss Alexandre’s discussion of the Eden story most offensive. How could you have invented such rot?”

Answer, Tamara: “I’m sorry that you’ve been so badly misinformed about this story and probably other moralistic biblical stories, sir. There’s a large difference between ‘fact’ and ‘belief’ and there’s little I can say to close that gap. In my presentation, I used the analyses of several noted religious scholars, and their interpretations are based on modern developments in linguistic studies and research into the cultural anthropology of that period. Please, this is not the place to debate issues of religious belief. You are entitled to your beliefs and opinions, but you’re not entitled to present them as facts in attempts to influence others. If you’d like to talk to me further about your concerns—if anyone else does too—please come see me after our presentation here.”

“Are you planning to seek accreditation? If so, with what organization?”

Answer, Kevin: “Absolutely. We’re in touch with the American Montessori Society and also are seeking accreditation from the Association of Independent Maryland Schools.”

“Are you going to be a public charter school or a private school?”

Answer, Barbara: “That answer is complicated. We’ll be functioning as a charter in one way, since our programs and curriculum will be managed by a team from the education faculty at Westphalia University. We’ll also serve as a lab school for them—an unusual one, to be sure. But we won’t be receiving any public funding. We found out that if we organized as a public charter school, we couldn’t follow our naturist model without making unacceptable changes.”

“Do you plan to employ only certified teachers and administrators?”

Answer, Barbara: “We do. Actually, there are several members of the two local nudist resorts who are either active or retired certified teachers. One, no two of them even have administrator certificates in the state. They’ve expressed interest in positions. And before you ask, yes, the teachers and staff will be nude.”