Everyone likes the idea of being free to be themselves. Sometimes we balk at laws and rules that seem to impinge on our ability to express ourselves. Teens in particular are notorious for questioning the purpose and legitimacy of rules. So it has been throughout our human history that individuals and groups push back whenever they believe that their rights are being curtailed. 

As a mother and teacher I often encountered situations in which the youngsters in my care pushed the envelope to determine just how far I would allow them to challenge the standards that I had set in place for my family and my classroom. I learned the importance of allowing them to ask questions and I was always willing to explain why I had certain guardrails in place. 

I often joked that if nobody ever did anything bad or disruptive we would not need the guidance of commandments or laws or classroom rules. I explained that they would do well to ask what might have led people to outline behavioral directives in the first place. I gave them examples and let them delineate the reasons why we specify which behaviors are unacceptable in certain situations. In particular through the discussions they began to realize that history and experience show us that people all too often take advantage of situations that seem to be free for alls.

I have been watching our president tossing aside watchdogs, agencies and rules that were designed to insure fairness in our society. He and many of those who support him seem to believe that many of the guardrails enshrined in our Constitution and in our laws are no longer needed to protect the people for whom they were originally designed. There may be some merit to the idea that certain laws outgrow their usefulness in some situations. We would do well to inspect and adjust the ways that we do things now again as needed, but I question the wholesale destruction of protections for people who are still all too often easily abused when there are no consequences. 

The first time I interviewed for a teaching position occurred in a time when there were few specific rules for protecting individuals from offensive and prejudicial assessments of their worth in the workplace. When I describe my unbelievable interview to people today they are appalled by my story and even wonder if it was just an horrific exception. Sadly if I had complained nobody at the time would have thought that I had been subjected to unfairness. Even I went along with the intrusive and insulting questions because that’s just the way things were and I wanted a job. 

I remember walking nervously into the office of the head of hiring for the school district. I was nervous just as most people are in such situations. I smiled meekly as I took a seat across from the man who would determine my fate and hoped that I would impress him with my answers to his interrogation. 

He began by noting that he liked the scent of my perfume and the way I had done my makeup and hair. He complimented me on my choice of clothing and expounded a bit on how appearance was of utmost importance to him. I mentally squirmed a bit when he told me that he had chosen to interview me based on the photo that I was required to include with my application. He said nothing about my academic success or the key points of my resume. Everything centered on the fact that he thought that I was attractive enough to  meet his standards.

The next subject of his assessment of me revolved around the fact that I was a Catholic. Amazingly in that time one of the questions on the applications asked about my religious beliefs. As he babbled on he admitted that there had been a time when the school district would not hire Catholics because most of the families living in that area were Christians. I hoped that he did not notice my inner eye roll as I realized that he did seem to believe that Catholics are indeed Christians. 

He went on the explain that one school year there was an extreme shortage of teachers and he had been forced to hire a former nun with many years of experience teaching in a Catholic school. When she proved to be one of the best educators he had ever sent approved for hire he decided that maybe it was time to set aside his concerns about Catholic teachers. Then he let me in on a bit of history by talking about a nearby Catholic church that had been burned down several times by citizens who did not want that influence in their neighborhood. 

Eventually he got down to the nitty gritty of determining my worth with a couple of easy questions about teaching that I fielded with no difficulty. Surprisingly he ended the interview by exclaiming that he knew the minute that I had walked into his office that I was a winner and that he would proudly send my resume around to the principals in his district. 

I indeed got a job with a fabulous female principal who seemed much more attuned to my educational and job oriented chops. I enjoyed a wonderful time working under her guidance but I would always look back on that incredibly discomfiting interview with the head of human resources. When I later took a labor law class while earning my Master’s degree. I fully understood why Congress had passed so many laws designed to protect workers. Those pertaining to prejudices felt particularly important to me. I related my story to the professor and my classmates all of whom were astounded that such practices had actually existed. 

We should all be alarmed when any of our laws are tossed aside without much thought. Ours should be a detailed process of determining why the law was created in the first place and whether or not the reasons for doing so have changed enough to insure that nobody would dare to creep back into a modus operandi that would impinge on the rights and safety of any person or group. 

Right now so much work designed for very real reasons is being tossed aside under the assumption that it was simply a “woke”attempt to give minorities a bigger advantage than they either deserved or needed. I worry that we are undoing so many programs that have kept the workplace and our society in general from falling back into atrocious habits. 

I was lucky enough to maintain my composure in that long ago interview even as I felt humiliated and unseen for who I was. The stereotyping of my worth based on appearances and my religion passed muster for me but I have always wondered what happened to the women whose choice of clothing and perfume did not meet the interviewer’s standards. I was happy that our nation actively served as a guardian. Now we seem to have let the dogs out leaving so many unprotected from prejudices. I suspect that unless we halt the wholesale destruction of rules we will eventually rue the day that we quietly allowed this to happen.