School Uniforms

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The great debate continues about should students have to wear school uniforms? There is no definitive answer as it entirely depends upon the persons beliefs. There are benefits for some children who wear uniforms and disadvantages to others.

The main reason schools in America choose not to allow their students to wear their own clothes is because of the gangs. Having a uniform stops gang members from displaying their colours and garb. The schools also believe it helps stop violence and helps instill a sense of pride in the students. It also helps to break down the barriers between different socioeconomic groups.

Below are some opinions taken from a messageboard regarding the issue:

“I feel we should keep to the uniform. It sets an example of the school. It is representation the community. It is easy to point out different people. Also there would be more fights/bullly’s due to the lack of ‘fashion’. ”

” Many schools throughout the U.S. force students grades kindergarten through twelfth to wear uniforms. Students who attend public schools should not have to wear uniforms for four reasons.

1. School uniforms inhibit studentsEUR(TM) individuality. Young people often express their feelings through the clothing that they wear. Uniforms will take away this form of expression. Why should school districts try to make everyone look the same?

2. A school uniform policy inhibits a student’s freedom of choice. Schools teach students that our country is a free one. But when school boards make students wear what they tell them too– it curtails the students’ freedom.

3. There is the issue of cost. Many parents shop for their children’s clothes at used and discount stores. Uniforms can cost more money than these families might be able to afford. Also, these students would need to buy additional clothing to wear after school and on the weekends. That’s double the amount of money a family would spend than they would without the uniforms.

4. The last reason I do not enjoy the thought of school uniforms is comfort. Students enjoy wearing comfortable clothing to school. Uniforms are not necessarily comfortable. Also, wearing a uniform might make the student uncomfortable around people outside the school who don’t have to wear a uniform.

If we want individuality, freedom, and comfort for students while keeping costs down for families, we should not have a school uniform policy for students who attend public schools. “

The debate over whether school uniforms are a good or bad idea is a hot topic that has raged on for decades. As with most things, there are two sides to the story but most schools across the world tend to agree that the pros of having a standardised uniform far outweigh the cons. However, both arguments have experts on their side and make valid points. Here is a summary of the pros and cons of school uniforms.

Pros

Many educators and experts believe that students who wear school uniforms get better results academically than those who do not. This is because a uniform policy removes the distraction of having to think about what they are wearing and helps improve attention. If you are wearing a uniform it sets a more serious tone to the learning environment making learning easier and student performance is improved.

Experts argue that students who wear a school uniform behave more appropriately within the school environment due to the enforced rules. A stricter atmosphere is generally more conducive to learning. Some experts even believe that students who wear a uniform are less likely to behave in a violent manner within school hours.

As clothing and fashion are often the root of social conflict within the school environment, a lot of experts believe that a mandatory uniform eliminates this problem meaning that there is less bullying or trouble between students. Many children judge each other based on what they wear and this can cause problems. With a uniform everyone looks the same and less vulnerable.

Keeping up with trends and fashion can be a costly business; therefore many experts believe that using a school uniform is a great way of saving money as most as affordable to most families. Uniforms also tend to be quite durable and easy to wash which is a bonus.

Cons

Many experts feel that the biggest drawback for children who are made to wear a uniform is that their self-expression is stifled. They believe that curbing individuality in young children can be detrimental to their development. Experts also believe that forcing each child to fit into a specific mould effectively strips away their individuality, not celebrating diversity as they should be.

Just as many people think that the cost of school uniform is negative as those who see it as a positive factor. Some parents think that a uniform increases the amount of clothing they will have to buy their children as they will still need clothes for the hours that they are out of school.

Some argue that comfort is needed in order to maximise learning and that most school uniforms are not comfortable. Therefore, many believe that uniforms can deter academic success.

This is a debate that is set to continue for many years to come but as most schools around the world already operate a mandatory uniform system it looks like uniforms are here to stay, for a few more years yet anyway.

KISSIMMEE–Calling it a uniform is a misnomer.

What’s in effect in Osceola County schools is a stringent dress code, with numerous allowances for self-expressions—from jeans to hoodies to any-color and any-funk socks, “outerwear,” belts and shoes, including flip-flops in high school. Students are allowed to wear four different colors shirt-wise, as long as the shirt has a collar. They can wear shorts, pants, skirts, skorts or combinations with leggings that make it difficult to judge whether they’re in school or rehearsing for a musical. On a cool day, like today, elementary and middle school students at the K-8 Celebration School looked like postcards from a rainbow, not regimented subjects of a buttoned-up regime.

And enforcement is a whole other story. During two class changes at Celebration High School today, you’d have been hard-pressed to find a student with his or her shirt tucked in, though it’s one of the “uniform” policy’s requirements. And torn jeans looked still in fashion. Still, they call it all a uniform policy in action.

That’s what a delegation of a dozen Flagler County school officials discovered today in a morning-long visit at four Osceola schools: “A uniform with a lot of options,” as School Board member Trevor Tucker described it, “or you can call it a more intense dress code policy than we have now.”

I think the variety of what I’m seeing is a little surprising,” said Bob Sawyer, the dean at Matanzas High School who, throughout the morning, could be seen keenly taking mental notes of the Osceola school grounds he was visiting, the class changes, the students’ dress and posture. “I think in our mind when you think uniforms, you think same-color shirt, same-color pants. That’s not what we’re seeing here.”

The Flagler delegation’s visit to Osceola was organized ahead of the Jan. 17 school board meeting—a week from today—when the board will take an up or down vote on whether to adopt a uniform policy for next year. The board is divided on the matter, with board members Sue Dickinson and John Fischer all for uniforms, Andy Dance and Tucker opposed (because of the issue’s timing and the hardship uniforms might impose on families) and Colleen Conklin saying she’s keeping an open mind, though she’s mostly in favor. She’s been looking for reasonsnot to go with uniforms. What she heard today, listening to teachers, administrators and students, were lessons on how to implement the policy: with a lot of advance PR, patience and the knowledge that, in time (and relatively fast), opposition to uniforms fades and parents and students go along, particularly when so much flexibility is built into the new requirement.

Lauren Grulich, a 7th grader at Celebration School, had been at a private school before, where the uniform policy was strictly uniforms: no variations on colors. “I actually like it a lot better here,” she says. “You can still, like, accessorize and stuff, and a lot of girls do it. It’s not too bad.” A high school girl, formerly from England—where the uniform requirement was also stringent—echoed the same thoughts as she and three fellow-students met with half the Flagler delegation later in the morning—with their principal, assistant principal, teachers and an Osceola school board member in the room: a freewheeling discussion, it wasn’t. As the student left, she showed another way to accessorize: all over her book-bag, which sported a defiant Che Guevara portrait.

“No matter how you limit the choices, they still find a way to individualize,” Celebration High School Principal Laura Rhinehart said. The district has loosened rather than tightened the policy since its implementation four years ago, as when it eliminated the requirement for dark-only denims, to allow any-blue denim. It has also kept clear of addressing the outerwear issue, even though it’s clearly a way for students to make an end-run around the policy. And the district has created various outs, such as t-shirt days (when students can wear the school’s t-shirt), or rewards that allow a student not to wear uniform-compliant clothes, or dress-down days.

Elementary school students look more prim and uniformed, their colors generally more monochromed than daring, whether it’s inner or outerwear. And Conklin suggested that if the visit had been organized on a warmer day, there would have likely been far fewer displays of alternative colors. Then again,

The Flagler delegation gathered at dawn in the parking lot of the county courthouse, then split into two vans. Each group would hit two different schools before reconvening for lunch at B.J.’s Brewhouse in Kissimmee to hear one final pitch from Osceola school officials and be treated to lunch by them. The visit was shadowed—and cheered—by Jay Wheeler, an Osceola County school board member who champions uniforms and who traveled to Flaglerto make his own pitch to a skeptical public in early December.

Only Conklin and Tucker were part of the delegation to Osceola, which also included Superintendent Janet Valentine and three school principals—Chris Pryor of Matanzas High School, Vernon Orndorff of Indian Trails Middle, and Stephen Hinson of Belle Terre Elementary.

They came to Osceola acknowledging that the dress code is not a major issue or a major concern in the schools,as the district’s own data proves. The school uniform initiative became one only because one school board member, John Fischer, made it so: it’s his pet project. It costs the school board nothing to discuss or implement, but has the potential of making board members look decisive on at least one issue they can fully control, as opposed to innumerable financial and curricular issues to which they’ve had to submit in financially strapped times. What’s clear is that the principals and their staff themselves would not have initiated the drive for uniforms, though a survey of school staffers show them supporting uniforms by upwards of 70 percent.

The principals and their assistants also came to Osceola knowing they would not be making the final decision—though they would have influence in defining how the policy is written, and how it is enforced. In Osceola, the principals discovered that enforcement is not only individualized according to the personality of each school principal, but according to the personality of each teacher. One Osceola teacher—Betsy Larson, who says she’s been “called the dress-code Nazi on occasion”—says she was opposed to the uniform policy originally. She favors student creativity. But, she said, “I don’t like looking at thigh-high skirts and butts,” and makes it known to her students who break the code.

Others can be so much more lenient that they get phone calls from their colleagues, who deal with the leniency when the student gets to their classroom. And teachers described the innumerable times when students called out on not wearing an appropriate shirt merely rumbled through their backpack and produced the required garment. In other words, they know what they have to wear, and they know that playing the odds will often favor their liberties, as opposed to the dress code, however lenient—or stringent.

But when Pryor, the Matanzas High principal, asked one of the key questions of the day to a group of teachers, he did not get a straight answer: “I’m constantly looking at ways to improve my school, so is this going to help me with student achievement?” Pryor asked.

“It can’t hurt,” was the best a teacher could respond. “It absolutely can’t hurt. Can I guarantee success? No.”

Unlike the Osceola school district, Flagler’s has been a straight-A district for the past four years, with most of its schools scoring A’s and the high schools missing it by whiskers. There is no overt need, as there supposedly was in Osceola four years ago, to impose uniforms, at least not for academic or safety reasons. Osceola did it, Wheeler (the Osceola school board member) said, to address a chronic problem: gangs and gang recruitment, an issue that, according to Flagler County Sheriff Don Fleming, doesn’t exist in Flagler County except as a “juvenile,” minor irritant involving perhaps 75 people.

“I don’t know if there is a need,” Tucker said during lunch, after visiting the schools. “That’s the question: is there a need?” Most parents he talks to, he said, are indifferent one way or the other. “I’m still up in the air. I’ve been pondering this question for I don’t know—I see both sides of the issue. If it promotes safety, why not do it. But if it promotes hardship, why do it?”

The hardship question was a central concern for the two Flagler board members. What they found on that score was also double-edged. Each school has developed a special sort of clothing shop where the uniform-compliant clothes are free for the taking. The schools Flagler officials visited today have huge minority and low-income populations, and even Celebration School, located in the more affluent part of Osceola, was redistricted so that its 1,330 students include 140 who are considered homeless: they live in a nearby hotel that serves essentially as a subsidized homeless shelter. But the school’s “Spirit Closet” has taken care of all needs. Variations on that closet appear at other schools. The clothes are either donated by former students and families or bought by the schools, especially at Celebration High School.

The money is from a combination of sources that include small amounts of school discretionary funds (“a few thousand dollars,” says Celebration High principal Laura Rhinehart), a small amount of federal funds designated as supplements for homeless causes, and a very large portion from a local non-profit foundation that pours money into education. Celebration, remember, is originally a Disney product, with Disney’s name and reputation still attached to it even as the company has distanced itself from the schools after building them. (“People value education, that’s the pixie dust that we have,” says Celebration School Principal Rene Clayton).

Need may not be as pronounced as uniform opponents claim. At one of the elementary schools the delegation visited, just 10 students out of 850 had a need for entirely donated uniforms, Tucker said.

“If you promote this as a cost issue for parents in a bad economy, this is how you’re going to get acceptance,” says Nona Noel, an elementary school guidance counselor at Celebration School. “I get parents coming in my office all the time saying I’m really glad we don’t have to buy all the clothes we used to buy. It’s not just the clothes, it’s the cost. That wasn;t really promoted when it was implemented, here, but that was the result.”

In the end, whether or not the visit was choreographed for the Flagler delegation to see only the best of what uniforms can do in a school district, the delegation also saw with its own eyes, and heard with its own ears, that there is a very large gulf between what people will call a “uniform policy” in the abstract and how it is implemented on the ground, not only in a different district, but in each different school.

Osceola has a dress code, not a uniform policy, and a dress code that’s not too far from Flagler’s. In Osceola, the biggest problem by far, says Rhinehart, is not push back from parents, which was “negligible” even the first year. It’s not students who refuse to go along. Most do. It’s students who don’t tuck their shirts in. That’s the problem “by far. A million times. Exponentially,” Rhinehart says, and from the looks of it at her school, that part of the policy is not enforced. Many teachers and administrators recognize the self-conscious aspect of tucking in, especially for fatter students: it’s a subtle, added humiliation they’d rather not impose.

It was also clear that whatever adaptation was necessary in Osceola took place faster than school officials anticipated. The feared walk-outs and sit-ins and outright refusal to comply didn’t take place. Osceola officials were surprised when a Flagler official asked if there were any teachers who urged their students to “stand up for their rights.” Apparently, none did.

But the Osceola district also put on a massive PR offensive. The school board passed the policy in April and implemented it in August, but not before fliers, letters, automated calls went home, preparing the way.

Still, the questions Tucker and Pryor posed remain: is there a need, and would uniforms improve achievements? The Osceola visit did not answer the questions conclusively.

If the Flagler school board goes for uniforms, as it is likely to next week, the Osceola model will speak loudly, likely enabling Tucker and Conklin to settle the issue pragmatically while giving Fischer what he wants, at least nominally: the school district would have its new uniform policy, but it would also have the Osceola model’s flexibility, along with each school principal’s own version of additional flexibilities, especially when it comes to enforcement. T-shirts may be history, and color choices may be narrowed a little, but the majority of students may find that the changes are less than advertised, as is the case in Osceola.

Students can rest assured that even the word “uniform” is not what it used to be. It has been accessorized.

School uniforms – whether it is important in schools or not has long been the subject of speculation among many people. There are people who support the use of school uniforms and there are also some who criticize the use as not being a way to solve discipline problems in schools. But those in support of it have plenty of reasons to hold. In fact, many schools around the world are now adopting the policy of school uniforms because of the advantages it offers to school authorities.

Advantages of uniforms

Schools facing discipline problems are now opting for uniforms as a part of their strategies to make their school progress. Here are some of the benefits that schools may enjoy on adopting a uniform policy:

School Safety – The first and foremost benefit of uniforms is that they help develop school safety. It becomes easier to identify any intruder in the school. Plus, kid’s uniforms reduce school violence because of dress. Every year, it is estimated that many kids get beaten up for their dresses from other kids or for the color of the dress. Uniforms can help stop this dress related gang violence. School uniforms prevent the risk of theft as students won’t be allowed to wear expensive dresses and accessories.

Equality Among Students – Another advantage of uniforms is that it promotes a sense of equality among students. Since, everyone wears the same dress; students won’t be able to differentiate between themselves on the basis of clothes. As a result, students won’t feel the pressure to buy luxurious clothes. Thus, a positive environment of friendship is created.

Moderate costing – School uniforms are a big relief to parents as they don’t have to buy expensive outfits for their children. Again, uniforms are less expensive than branded clothes.

School Spirit – Wearing provocative clothes in class can lead to lot of distractions. But uniforms reduce the distractions and help children focus on school work only. Encouraging students to concentrate on school work instead of fashion may help to improve the spirit of the school. Lack of distraction in class will help students to increase their attention on school work. As a result, the overall performance in school is increased. Moreover, students will also feel the professionalism of school by wearing school uniforms.

All these advantages have prompted many schools all over the world to go for school uniforms instead of casual dressing. Most of the school principals have changed their views on uniforms and accept the fact that uniforms really do have a positive effect on the overall spirit of the school.

The other side

Since, most of the schools are thinking about the uniform option, the debate about whether uniforms curb the individuality of students continues. Most of the critics of uniforms have the view that uniforms don’t allow students to express themselves which individual dressing does. Many parents and students argue that their right to individuality is breached. But, they need to understand the reasons behind the school’s policy to implement uniforms. There are indeed many different ways to express oneself rather than self expression through fashion.

Finally, uniforms in school are really an advantage in lots of ways. That is why; many public schools too are going for uniforms to improve safety and discipline.

Since different dresses of different students make diversity in the school environment, thus, uniforms of the school keep the uniformity among the students. Uniforms come in different colors according to the demand of the schools. They are quite diverse in design from one school to another school.

Moreover, school uniforms ensure the integrity among various students. While they wear uniform, all dresses become the same and they do not feel neglected or jealous when they see someone wearing better dress. This kind of distinction goes away while they find uniformity in dressing in a school. More importantly, when students wear uniforms for their school they carry name of the school and they tend to stay away from any kind of misbehavior.

Many parents want their students to wear school uniform. All parents find that there has to be public school uniforms and private school uniforms. There would be no mercy if any student from any kind of school background does not wear school uniforms. Usually, it is seen that private school uniforms are more in vogue, whereas, students are more reluctant about school uniforms while they are going to public schools. Though parents from both school backgrounds want their wards to wear proper school uniform.

School uniforms do not only carry the image of a school but also maintain many other disciplines of schools. Students are highly punished if they are not present in the school by wearing proper uniform. This particular dress code of the school ensures that students should be well-aware of the fact that they should be accustomed with a single dress in their work life as well.

School uniforms come in different colors and designs. Uniforms for boys and girls are quite different. Boys’ dresses come in shirts and pants variety and girls usually wear skirts with shirts. Otherwise, girls are found in different frocks with tie and belt.  Sometimes, girls wear tunic with suitable school shoes with it.  In winters, girls are also found in trousers and shirts. Boys in school also wear neck ties and belts.

Public school uniforms are found in different colors and themes. Though many parents find it difficult to make their kids wear school uniform as in public school wearing school uniform is not always that mandatory.

Thus, we have seen the importance of the school uniforms. Now being a parent, we need to understand the value of school uniform and we need to get assured that our wards are wearing neat and clean uniform everyday while going to school.