School Dress Codes? Uniforms?

[MarkBastable]

At my all-boys school there were very specific rules about how long hair should be, which I can still quote.

"A boy's hair should not be so long at the back that it touches the collar when the head is held upright. It should not be so long at the front that it falls over the eyes when a boy at his desk leans forward over a book. The hair at the sides should not cover the top of the ears."

This was 1975, and long hair was in fashion, so at least half of us totally ignored the rules and had hair to our shoulders. We reckoned that the headmaster couldn't cane all of us. (Apart from anything else, he'd've passed out after the third or fourth climax, the perverted old saddo.) I thought it was perfectly valid to ignore the rule because, whereas I could take my school uniform off at the end of the day, I'd be stuck with the haircut - and I didn't think the school had the right to make me wear my hair like a conscript's in the evenings and at weekends.

Anyway - the rule was unenforceable, though that didn't stop the Headmaster railing at us as we walked past his study window, using that loping gait that causes long hair to bob and shimmy in a fashion designed to piss off those in authority.

In 1977, the Sex Pistols changed everything. Suddenly many boys at school could honestly claim that their hair did not touch their collar, didn't fall over the eyes and was nowhere near their ears, on account of it was spiked up into a bright green mohican that school rules could never have anticipated, but which drove the Headmaster to higher planes of apoplectic rage than the pre-Raphaelite flowing locks could ever have inspired.

He dropped off the twig that year. I like to think that our hair was a contributory factor.

[TheFifthElement]

I'm sure your class mates and yourself were paragons of reason. If only this were generally so, then there would be no need for uniforms at all. I'd be happy wit that. I don't know where you are from, but the problems in the UK, and the US, by the posts from previous threads, indicate that reason is not one of the qualities shown by some of the kids.

Then surely it stands to reason that if:
- uniforms are prevalent in UK and USA, and
- discipline is still a problem
then having a uniform is not improving matters? Because if children wear uniforms from an early age and by the time their 16 they're still out of control something else is wrong. Better to focus on that than whether someone has their shirt tucked in, surely?

Sorry, the whole uniform thing seems to me to be the equivalent of trying to crack an egg by staring hard in the other direction.

Is it not significantly more important to encourage self discipline as opposed to obedience? Is it not better that a child can get up in the morning and decide for themselves what is an appropriate mode of dress and what is not? Kids may be perfectly capable of this, certainly my 6 and 10 year old have no problems looking smart even of a weekend, but if they're not tested how will you ever know?

Yes, a uniform makes things easy. It means that neither the parents nor the kids have to take any responsibility or thought over what is, at essence, quite a basic life skill. Somehow I just can't see how that is supposed to be a good thing.

It has, to me, seemed for a long time that the problem we have in UK (I can't speak for anywhere else) is that obedience and ease are valued over responsibility and self discipline. Kiki makes some quite valid points in this respect. If we want children (and adults) to be responsible we must first give them responsibility. Instead it's just easier to tell them what to do and get cross when they 'disobey'. If we want that to change we need to start differentiating between those rules which are there because they add value (safety, for example) and those rules which are there for 'other' reasons. And we need to ditch the ones which serve no useful purpose. School uniforms don't aid learning, they don't prevent bullying or improve behaviour. They don't improve safety (in fact in some respects they may be more dangerous - partly because of the 'false' sense of security they engender); they can be uncomfortable, distracting and inappropriate (too warm, not warm enough) and they can be enforced disproportionately. If only it were true that life's ills could be cured by clothes perhaps we'd all be much better off. But they don't, so why have them?

And it worries me that we're encouraged to accept it because it's easier than the alternative. And it worries me that there's such a lack of choice. I always thought it was much more important to do the right thing rather than the easy thing. Perhaps I'm just old fashioned and out of date. Who knows?

[kiki1982]

Agree with TheFifthElement.

I was bullied. It might surrprise you that I did not wear a uniform and still I was not bullied for my clothes. I cannot recall anyone in my school bullied for them, actually, though we were a uniformless school (as almost all schools in Belgium). And bullied for what actually? I still ask myself that question. After a while it went never to be seen again.

Still, bullying does not depend on uniforms then, does it?

The problem in the UK, in my mind, is too much discipline for discipline's sake. It is, like health and safety, gone mad.

People are frustrated and cease to care if their responsibility for their own lot is taken away. No responsibility = no care. Simple. If people cannot get anything good out of being resonsible or someting bad out of being irresponsible, they will not care, because it doesn't bring them anything.

Soviet Union workers also ceased to care as they got nothing more out of it.

The same with those uniforms: students have ceased to care because they are treated in a stupid way, so they act stupidly. And it only starts in school, it goes on later in life. It is a general trend in the UK as a whole.

In Germany where I live now, 18-year-olds come out of school so amazingly responsible. It is frightning. Some of them go astray, yes (early in their teens), but children are largely left to judge for themselves. And they grow up, behaving responsibly most of them. People also complain here about youths, but they do not know half how bad it is in other countries.

Discipline for dischipline's sake does not work, that is clear. Make them feel the consequences of their own mistakes, and they will live up to them very quickly. It doesn't they are not going to harm themselves, but let them do what they want within boundaries. It works elsewhere.

[Paulclem]

At my all-boys school there were very specific rules about how long hair should be, which I can still quote.

"A boy's hair should not be so long at the back that it touches the collar when the head is held upright. It should not be so long at the front that it falls over the eyes when a boy at his desk leans forward over a book. The hair at the sides should not cover the top of the ears."

This was 1975, and long hair was in fashion, so at least half of us totally ignored the rules and had hair to our shoulders. We reckoned that the headmaster couldn't cane all of us. (Apart from anything else, he'd've passed out after the third or fourth climax, the perverted old saddo.) I thought it was perfectly valid to ignore the rule because, whereas I could take my school uniform off at the end of the day, I'd be stuck with the haircut - and I didn't think the school had the right to make me wear my hair like a conscript's in the evenings and at weekends.

Anyway - the rule was unenforceable, though that didn't stop the Headmaster railing at us as we walked past his study window, using that loping gait that causes long hair to bob and shimmy in a fashion designed to piss off those in authority.

In 1977, the Sex Pistols changed everything. Suddenly many boys at school could honestly claim that their hair did not touch their collar, didn't fall over the eyes and was nowhere near their ears, on account of it was spiked up into a bright green mohican that school rules could never have anticipated, but which drove the Headmaster to higher planes of apoplectic rage than the pre-Raphaelite flowing locks could ever have inspired.

He dropped off the twig that year. I like to think that our hair was a contributory factor.

Yes - it used to be mad. Completely unenforceable. My Brother- in -Law was suspended for wearing a red hat in winter at the school my son went to. It's a bit different now but still has a uniform.

[Paulclem]

Then surely it stands to reason that if:
- uniforms are prevalent in UK and USA, and
- discipline is still a problem
then having a uniform is not improving matters? Because if children wear uniforms from an early age and by the time their 16 they're still out of control something else is wrong. Better to focus on that than whether someone has their shirt tucked in, surely?

Sorry, the whole uniform thing seems to me to be the equivalent of trying to crack an egg by staring hard in the other direction.

Is it not significantly more important to encourage self discipline as opposed to obedience? Is it not better that a child can get up in the morning and decide for themselves what is an appropriate mode of dress and what is not? Kids may be perfectly capable of this, certainly my 6 and 10 year old have no problems looking smart even of a weekend, but if they're not tested how will you ever know?

Yes, a uniform makes things easy. It means that neither the parents nor the kids have to take any responsibility or thought over what is, at essence, quite a basic life skill. Somehow I just can't see how that is supposed to be a good thing.

It has, to me, seemed for a long time that the problem we have in UK (I can't speak for anywhere else) is that obedience and ease are valued over responsibility and self discipline. Kiki makes some quite valid points in this respect. If we want children (and adults) to be responsible we must first give them responsibility. Instead it's just easier to tell them what to do and get cross when they 'disobey'. If we want that to change we need to start differentiating between those rules which are there because they add value (safety, for example) and those rules which are there for 'other' reasons. And we need to ditch the ones which serve no useful purpose. School uniforms don't aid learning, they don't prevent bullying or improve behaviour. They don't improve safety (in fact in some respects they may be more dangerous - partly because of the 'false' sense of security they engender); they can be uncomfortable, distracting and inappropriate (too warm, not warm enough) and they can be enforced disproportionately. If only it were true that life's ills could be cured by clothes perhaps we'd all be much better off. But they don't, so why have them?

And it worries me that we're encouraged to accept it because it's easier than the alternative. And it worries me that there's such a lack of choice. I always thought it was much more important to do the right thing rather than the easy thing. Perhaps I'm just old fashioned and out of date. Who knows?

I agree with a lot of what you say Fith, but I've never said the uniforms will cure discipline problems, though they may help. I base this on reports in the news of Heads turning round schools which didn't have uniforms, but who introduced them.

I'm not trying to say that that was the major factor - it may have only aided improving the outside and community perception of the school. They talk about getting the staff on board and having a consisten srategy that is carried through, and it was probably that which improved the discipline and performance.

This addresses your first point - not all schools have uniforms, and where the school is failing, they tend to introduce one as part of a package. I'm not saying that it is any more significant than perhaps it helps.

I also see that your children - and mine - and those of my colleagues could do very well without uniforms in schools. What we all have in common is that we are reasonable people with reasonable kids - my colleagues and I would probably qualify as middle class.

But I come from a poor working class family. Clothes were a big issue for us- as I have said. My three youngest siblings suffered at shool with their horrible clothes they had no option but to wear on non-uniform days. I'm not kidding, they were bulied for it and still recall it as very unpleasant. It has certainly affected my siter's self confidence.

That's in the past now, but you can still get a whiff of it . Going back to my son's school - a boys school - the sense of not standing out and attracting attention really affected my son and his nice mates. Anyone who looked a bit odd - perhaps with goth hair was pursued by certain lads and given a going over. My son would not deviate from what was some self imposed normal look in the school. His mate dyed his hair and bought a range of trendy clothes the day he left the school. The transformation was really startling. But it wasn't the case that the uniform held him back. It allowed them to fit in without attracting this negative attention. Free of the school, he felt he could wear what he wanted beause he wouldn't be with the same daft kids at college.

The responsibility would have been too much for a surprising number in my son's school. It would just have compounded their very destructive tribalism. They actively sought difference. I can say they wouldn't have responded well to the choices and reason approach. It's a shame, and this school is not the worst by any means, and I'm not trying to tar all schools as the same. I think it is easier in the current system.

As I've said before, I'm not for uniforms per se. They are perhaps the best solution to the clothes problem in schools as they are now. In a different thread I've mentioned that I don't like the school system as it is. It causes a lot of problems - but that's for a different thread.

[Paulclem]

Agree with TheFifthElement.

I was bullied. It might surrprise you that I did not wear a uniform and still I was not bullied for my clothes. I cannot recall anyone in my school bullied for them, actually, though we were a uniformless school (as almost all schools in Belgium). And bullied for what actually? I still ask myself that question. After a while it went never to be seen again.

Still, bullying does not depend on uniforms then, does it?

The problem in the UK, in my mind, is too much discipline for discipline's sake. It is, like health and safety, gone mad.

People are frustrated and cease to care if their responsibility for their own lot is taken away. No responsibility = no care. Simple. If people cannot get anything good out of being resonsible or someting bad out of being irresponsible, they will not care, because it doesn't bring them anything.

Soviet Union workers also ceased to care as they got nothing more out of it.

The same with those uniforms: students have ceased to care because they are treated in a stupid way, so they act stupidly. And it only starts in school, it goes on later in life. It is a general trend in the UK as a whole.

In Germany where I live now, 18-year-olds come out of school so amazingly responsible. It is frightning. Some of them go astray, yes (early in their teens), but children are largely left to judge for themselves. And they grow up, behaving responsibly most of them. People also complain here about youths, but they do not know half how bad it is in other countries.

Discipline for dischipline's sake does not work, that is clear. Make them feel the consequences of their own mistakes, and they will live up to them very quickly. It doesn't they are not going to harm themselves, but let them do what they want within boundaries. It works elsewhere.

I take your point about responsibility in Belgium and Germany, but it is not the same situation in the UK. I don't think it's about too many rules either. It's about coping - not the best solution - but coping with the current system. If things change then perhaps the kids will be able to discard the uniforms. We need a different system for that though.

[kiki1982]

I see what you are saying, PaulClem, but I cannot help thinking that the clothes-problem of bullying is down to this thing of everyone looking the same all day every day.

As soon as something is different (non-uniform days or in freetime), there is a bigger emphasis on those clothes and the outer appearance of things than there would be if they were used to people looking different all day every day.

It might be, though, that that problem is a typical British thing. As I said before, I have never heard of true clothes-bullying in my school of about 1000 students, whether people wore something scruffy or not. Never heard of it, and I was in school with some really kind of poor children.

In my school, there were Goths, jeans-and-T-shirt people like me, real ladies with make-up and everything, manly girls, fat, short, red-haired, what-not. I have never known anyone to be bullied for any outer feature. Bullying definitely went on though, I don't want to pretend that it didn't happen having been a victim myself. But not for fat, short, slim or clothing of any kind.

Why do people get bullied? Because they are an easy target. In my mind, the clothes-bullying is only there as I said because the clothing-thing is exaggerated as a result of deprivation. Things become more important as they are not available. And you see that outside school as well.

But that's only my opinion if I think about the differences between perception in Britain and my own.

[Paulclem]

Yes, perhaps it's just different situations. I know in my daughter's school they too have tribes - it's the sister school to my son's boy's school. She is a geek, but there are chavs and plastics (having lots of make-up apparently) - all denoted by the girls themselves. Very tribal, with instances of bullying.

[qimissung]

yes - I really recommend you Google the case about a boy in Texas (Taylor Pugh), who has been placed in a sort of in-school suspension because he has long hair

smells like Fascism to me

Ah, yes, I have read of this case, although I have not followed it. The family lives in Mesquite, I believe; I live in a nearby suburb of Dallas. Mesquite is pretty conservative, so I doubt they'll give in.

Let me tell you my school uniform story. It's not about uniforms, though it is about a school dress code. The school I work at tries to have a dress code and to enforce it. Right now, for example, kids are not allowed to wear facial jewelry. That means that if an administrator comes into the room, they take out their nose or lip ring. For years the district tried to get kids to quit sagging. That's where the guys let their jeans sag down below their butt. Then they wear really long t-shirts. I think the district has finally given up trying to stop that.

About five years ago, I had a student, a beautiful, smart girl. She dyed her hair purple. A few months after that she and her guardian decided she would get a better education in a different district. So she went to about five different districts trying to enroll. None of them would allow her to enroll in their schools while her hair was purple, and she did not want to change her hair color. So she finally came back and eventually graduated from our school. Her hair was back to it's original brown, by that time, but she was still a good student.

[Annamariah]

Here there are no schools that have school uniform. Obviously I take it for granted that you go to school dressed just like you would dress when going out shopping or to see your friend.

I've heard that in some schools there's some kind of dress code (no too short skirts or revealing tops), but I've never seen anyone being sent home to change into more proper outfit or anything. Basically kids just dress however they want, and I don't remember seeing that many outfits that I would have thought inappropriate apart from some too revealing skimpy clothes on some teenaged girls.

I think I would have hated it if I would have had to wear a skirt at school every day or something... I think it's good that kids are allowed to dress the way they want, it's more comfortable to be at school that way.

[johnnya]

I run security at a high school that is 2miles from the border of Mexico and had a lock down because a group of people that got caught crossing the border,got away from custody or something like that and ended up 1ft from school grounds. With all the border violence and killings, we have to be careful. The kids in this area high school use uniform shirts, they are more toward a athletic wear but all the same, sometimes kids get camoflouged with them. I had gang members before the uniforms kicked in. Now, i see it all toned down. Once in a while somebody comes along with baggy pants and you see the underwear, I tell them that I already saw the checkered table cloth in the morning and don't need to be remined about it. But it made a big difference here. We have students that live in Mexico, and come here to a school called Valley View in Pharr Tx. But the 2 borders are only within a 5 minute drive to our school. But the uniforms takes that edge away, they do not feel tough with it on.

[Revolte]

I understand the gang thing, but I have to say the world isnt safe no matter what. No matter how hard you shelter someone their chance of being killed by the hands of some nimrod remains.

Clothes should be the last issue in school. I'm a punk rocker and a pretty stubborn one at that. I got in trouble all the time in high school for my clothes and my hair, but it didn't stop me. In the end I had great grades. Stupid people to stupid stuff, well.. We all do stupid stuff, but you get my point. School however, should be focused on education, nothing more and nothing less.

Also I have been to private schools as well, I remember being beat up all the time there, in my uniform. I also remember no one ever getting in trouble for it... Funny how that works. It's hard to notice a dead sheep inbetween houndreds live.

[qimissung]

I hear you, Revolte. I'm all for individuality myself. But if in johnnya's experience uniforms helped make the school environment safer, then I think that should be taken into account, also.

The problem lies in that, if the situation were to change, the board and parents were unable to make that change. I do think schools tend to give lip service to the idea of a student's individuality-to acquire a deep and rich education in which they find themselves and the world- but nothing, nothing could be farther from the truth in American public schools.