Guest Article by Edwin Choi of K12directoryofschools
School Uniforms: Choking Self Expression
Where do you sit on the war over whether or not students should wear school uniforms? Before jumping on the bandwagon that uniforms keep today’s chaotic youth in check, consider the downsides a uniformed campus has on a child’s personal and social development.
Self expression is stifled. School uniforms eliminate one of the key methods elementary, secondary, and high school students alike use to express individuality. In a society that boasts the importance of individual success, putting a cork on the search for the self could be nothing short of lethal to a child’s future experiences. Experts also believe there is no way to completely stop self expression in the psychological development of children and teenagers, so suffocating it with uniforms often leads to other, more inappropriate means of expressing the self.
Students are forced into a mold. When self expression and individuality are choked out of a student body, only a wash is left behind. Students are not exposed to the concept of diversity and go through cultural shock when facing the “real world” of America, where a mold is the last thing we wriggle ourselves into.
Students are not comfortable in uniform. I don’t know about you, but when I sit down to read a book, it’s usually in the most comfortable outfit I can find with a warm cup of chai. If a student is forced into one of the most uncomfortable outfits imaginable—like a uniform they like despise and could very well be made out of itchy, rigid cloth to boot—they’re not going to read their textbooks with the same ease as their non-uniform counterparts. No student is interested in learning when they are not comfortable in their own second skin.
Uniforms can get expensive. Some experts claim that uniforms eliminate the need to purchase expensive, name-brand clothing to boast a child’s popularity; yet school uniforms do not come with the cheapest price tag, and you’re going to need multiples to get through the week. Students that are forced in uniform are also going to want “normal” clothes to embrace individuality outside of school. Two different wardrobes can exhaust a parent’s wallet.
The next time you jump to the side of school uniforms, consider the negative impact a uniform has on your child. Your child’s academic performance is just as much based on their happiness as it is adhering to strict and seemingly necessary rules.
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Hell no! Public schools have no grounds for requiring uniforms that are not provided by the school.
LOL, I don’t care about the even playing field. Performance will show kids there’s no such thing as an even playing field. Some people are just better than them at various topics. Clothing just adds another variable but an unimportant one.
I don’t care about self-expression either. You can express yourself in other ways besides clothing. There is a class called “Art”. Express yourself there.
There are a number of self-expression incidents gone wrong. Take kids with gender identity issues. Should school staff really have to deal with the social issues that come with self-expression through clothing? Thats an issue that should be dealt with at home and outside of the learning environment, not in the classroom with “Look at that HE-SHE!!!”
No uniforms in public schools. Unless the tax payers want to pick up the bill. And we really don’t need to be doing that right now.
The amount of muting and brainwashing going on today is quite silly. Making a child wear a uniform to school is just silly. He won’t see people with uniforms in college or the working world so why throw on a uniform at school?
Depends on where they go to work…LOL
Being a parent myself, I almost wish my child’s school mandated uniforms. Uniforms are cheaper and are much easier to attain. I prefer that over the school telling my child that you can’t wear this or you can’t wear that.
I think that uniforms have nothing to do with how that child is perceived or performs in the classroom. If all kids wore khakis and polos, some kids would have dry cleaned clothes, some ironed, some dirty, some smelly. Each its on self expression, but each ammo for the next kid.
Very true.
Uniforms are cheaper and easier to attain than normal clothes? You’re not serious.
Afraid so. Even the best TJMaxx clearance rack offers clothes for a 8 year old at $15 and higher. All khaki ensemble uniforms I’ve seen come in a 3 for $15 or 5 for $20 price for the pants and polo shirts. All colors inclusive.
Then I wouldn’t feel so bad about the kids messing the clothes up by tumbling in the grass and rubbing the Friday pizza on them.
I think that kids should wear uniforms in school. Kids receive a lot of peer pressure to fit in. An overwhelming part of that pressure comes from the clothing (brand names) that you wear that the other kids judge you on. When kids can’t drop money on the fancy brand names, they can’t be in the in crowd and get picked on which causes a lot of unnecessary drama. Uniforms would take some of that pressure off of kids that have that need to fit in.
My son wears a uniform and I love it for the simple fact that it is less expensive to replace than his other clothes. He like most boys is really hard on his clothes. I have seen how it makes his classmates and friends feel unified also. They are proud that they are all wearing the same clothing.
This drama that school kids live in is called life. Everyone is not equal and the sooner they figure this out, the sooner they realize that they have to work hard to achieve the good things in life.
I hear you saying “kids don’t understand that” but they do. You might have one or two gangsta kids beat down another for his Jordan’s, but how is that different than me getting carjacked for my Benz? Part of life, people are lazy and jealous. Get over it.
Uniforms are a another wishful fake reality just like private schools and all black colleges.
School is not meant to mimic real life. Its purpose is to feed kids a bunch of knowledge they may or may not find useful later in life. Minimizing external distractions to improve their ability to learn is a lot easier when you have a controlled environment.
Maybe someone should do a study to find out if uniformed versus non-uniformed students perform better academically or not. As far as black parents are concerned, I think If they spent as much time insuring their children learned as they do in insuring they have the best clothes, there would probably be a lot less delinquents with their pants on the ground.
The “self-expression” argument is a sham. These kids are all going to end up dressing the same anyway. And if you don’t, you suffer ridicule so you end up conforming to some made-up standard.
You forgot black fraternities!
LOL
That’s just not right sir.
Umm…school is real life, it doesn’t need to mimic. Kids are in social situations and in a competitive environment, sounds like the real world to me. School is not just about learning knowledge.
Black parents? As if the white kids aren’t Polo and Ed Hardy’d up? Both sides are guilty of dressing to impress. It’s a parenting issue in general not a clothing issue, but it’s also a class/income issue next.