Sunday, September 21, 2008

More on Uniforms

I thought I would offer my own school experiences on the subject of uniforms. Throughout elementary school I wore uniforms, I didn't even think twice about them. I went to a private school, my mom had to scrape pennies just to buy milk. Other kids that went to the same school were by in large, a lot better off. But I didn't really understand all that. Now I do and the disparage is unbelievable. But the thing is nobody knew and nobody cared.

Fast-forward to middle school, where in the days before the internet and distance learning, my mother wanted to get her bachelor's in nursing. It was in Maryland, and it was my first time in public school. The kids were heartless. There were no uniforms. There was plenty of hurt to go around. Anybody not assimilating was mocked or worse. Add to that I was from the south and the in general angst of a middle schooler, well it was probably the worst year of my life. I got in plenty of fights, most of which I won, but it didn't make me fit in any better.

Now fast-forward again to high school in a small rural southern Mississippi town. Wal-mart was the only place there was to shop, unless you was highfalutin. More than half, maybe more than 3/4's of the kids there got clothes from the same place. It was like a uniform in a sense. Everybody was in economic distress, hence they got the cheap stuff, and those that didn't knew they had it good and kept quiet about it.

Still I don't think we need uniforms for high school, but somebody does. I don't know what kids are wearing these days, but the main culprit is probably too much drawers out of the male and too much of everything else out of the female. Which is crazy, but if you think about it, teachers aren't there to tell you how to dress, they are there to teach. When it becomes a problem getting kids to obey, the teacher quickly becomes the enforcer. That's not what they signed up for. So if a blanket, to cover all bases is used then maybe teachers will become teachers again. Maybe...

1 comment:

WileyCoyote said...

MH, I grew up in uniforms til the middle of fifth grade, too. (Some nuns just can't tolerate independent thought, is what I've always told myself.) For years, every year whie my kids were in private school, I wrote a letter to the school board decrying uniforms, saying the dress code was enough, and that uniforms for a private school were invariably cheaply made and 'way overpriced. They breathed a sigh of relief when my last kid graduated, and went to uniforms.

Uniforms are also notoriously hard to get for as cheap as they are; they proscribe uniformity, which is a BAD thing in my book, and they are a lure that enhances predators' fantasies. A school dress code, strictly enforced, is all that is needed - the only problem is that most teachers enforce the code discriminately. If they either like, or are afraid of, a certain group of kids, those kids are exempt from adhering to the rules - and that doesn't just apply to dress codes.

I still hate uniforms. My kids wore kmart, walmart, and even thrift store and Family Dollar store clothes - and so did we, when we didn't get our clothes for free, uniforms from our employer. See, in the workaday world, if your employer wants you to dress uniformly, they have to provide those uniforms. But real life rules don't apply to schools; their arbitrary and simpering decisions that "It will make everyone more comfortabe" and "the rich kids can't lord it over the poor ones" and even "It will make it easer for kids to get to school on time" - all assume that children (and parents) are undisciplined spoiled idiots. And that is insulting. The parents who aren't insulted by it, IMHO, really ARE undisciplined spoiled idiots, and deserve to have their decisions made for them.

Baaaaaaaa. BAAAAAAA. Listen to the sheep...