ABSTRACT
Sir Albert Aynsley Green, England’s first Children’s Commissioner, understands children and their need to distinguish themselves from adults. In a jest aimed at schools that had banned adolescents from wearing hoodies (cotton sweatshirts with hoods that hide the child’s face), he told me, “The fastest way to get the kids from wearing hoodies is to have the wrinklies wear them.” It’s a friendly reminder that children negotiate with their peers and the adults in their lives (the wrinklies) for a powerful sense of individual and collective identity. If their teachers started wearing hoodies, I would imagine teenagers would quickly find some other way to show us that they are different.
