School Uniforms Are They Important?

[KarenIsabella]

My child is just about to start nursery in at an independent school where children are not required to wear a school uniform and I just want to air my thoughts about this topic after various discussions with friends and collegues.

For me it is important that children be free from the constraints and ideas imposed by others and nurtured to develop their own ideas and ideals. I am all for children looking nice and smart but what is the real purpose of the school uniform? Really it?s the removal of a person?s individuality and free thinking.

This can be seen in the military where individualism and willfulness is seen as a negative thing! In these organisations uniforms are given a very high importance and any deviation from the prescribed uniform is a serious issue.

Individuals are not welcome in the military, perhaps they are scared that if military people realised that war was not a good idea they would abandon the organisation!

So all in all uniforms are really a form of control, is that what we want our children? Preparing them from an early age to have no personality, no freedom of thought or individualism is not for me.

karenisabella , we still seem to be at cross purposes here. I agree completely with your last post addressed to lynettescavo but I am content that wearing school uniform is not mutually exclusive from my DD being encouraged to decide what clothes are practical and appropriate. She gets to decide every weekend and every day in the 13 weeks of holidays. She can also decide whether she wants to change clothes after school etc. please provide evidence to support our theory that children wearing school uniform are unable to demonstrate independent thought.

Oops. Your theory. Certainly not our theory.

My experience is that buying a school uniform is actually more expensive. I am buying stuff for the dcs for out of school. They need enough to wear for the hols ie 2 weeks at a time + some stuff for 'special occasions'.
That is about the same amount I would buy them if they were also wearing these clothes for school.
So school uniform = more clothes to buy so more expenses

I agree that a school uniform indicates which school is the child going to. Helpful in Primary when they their twice a year outings.
But even wo a uniform, children and esp teenagers are very good at 'accessorizing' them to give all the messages they want/need about where they shop/how wealthy they are (well their parents are).
It might be what shoes they are wearing, where the trousers are coming from etc...

Personally, I am feeling sad that they in effect learning that going to school (and then work) = wearing the cheapest clothes possible. Nylon trousers that look awful etc... just on the ground that 'you only need cheap clothes for school as they are going to get ruined'. I would prefer them to learn how to look after their stuff and wear a coat in winter when it's snowing

I do suspect that an independent school which has no school uniform will have different ethos to one where 4yo's are wearing shirt and ties.

One of my DC's goes to a high school where until a few years ago there was no uniform. When the school introduced a new uniform (with a new HT) parents were up in arms, marching around with placards, etc. They have kept the tradition of calling teacher by their first names, but I think they maybe very gently trying to phase this out (again, a new HT).

For me, the only schools I wanted DS to go to were the very traditional boys grammar, or the "hippy" school where they are on first names with the teachers. The average comp's in-between the two just didn't cut it for me. I chose the school where the DC seemed happiest and most relaxed.

Apologies if this point has already been made -

I used to work in a school with fairly dramatic contrasts of wealth / social background and a lot of movement (children turning up on the doorstep expecting to start school that day etc).

Uniform was really important to us, and to those children. Not in a 'it makes them neat', nor 'it makes them conform' but 'in the two minutes it takes to produce a clean jumper from the secondhand box, a child - any child - can be transformed from an outsider into a member of the community'.

As many of our pupils were 'outsiders in society' for a variety of reasons (economic, cultural, to do with rural isolation, SEN), being able to create an immediate sense of 'belonging' and 'welcome' was genuinely valuable.

[So what if the jumpers were worn with stripy skirts and pink leggings? The children wore the school jumpers with pride.]

I'm not sure about that, teacherwith2kids - wouldn't it be better to teach all children that it doesn't matter what you wear? Rather than, stick on the same jumper as everyone else and then you'll belong?

I would love to be a bloke & get to wear their usual uniform of dress shirt & trousers. So much easier than the bewildering array of options for female office dress. It's doing my head in.

My DS is happily moving from a no-uniform sixth form to one where you have to wear a suit. He is much happier in uniform.

I know of a no-uniform private school, but in its lower school they have a sweatshirt for school trips, as it makes it much easier to spot their pupils quickly.

DS was at a uniform-free primary, and evryone loved it - the governors have stipulated that they are looking for a new Head who will suport the policy.

There were very few problems over fashion antics, everyone wore jeans and tops.

The school (S London, very mixed demography across all indices) was extremely happy, excellent behaviour, very little bullying.

I woiuldn't equate unifoimrs with the military or a threat to individualism, but just putting your kid into thier ordinary clothes to go t school frlt like an ordinary thing to do.

I didn't find it more expensive: it relieved me of the job of making sure that we had clean uniform items, instead of having several school sweatshirts or polo shirts that couldn't be used for anything else, he just wore a normal range of his clothes (not very best).

Also, it was far more flexible wrt the weather. Shorts one day, very loose light top, fleeces in winter...the kids were v comfortable.

DD going to non uniformed primary. Am relieved not to have to have shirts ready for Monday mornings, plus all the children who are there wear appropriate clothing.

Yep my next door secondary school obviously has in their uniform policy that girls have to wear tights with a skirt.
So in the last few weeks, you had girls in skirt with tights on ... even though it was 27oC outside....

Blu how does having a uniform stop you dressing a child for the weather ?

RestingUnderTheSun - my DCs secondary does not have a policy that says the girls have to wear tights. However the girls do because a) its the fashion b) they feel better about how they look (same as the 3 inches of make up). Maybe I could introduce her to Sally Hansen but actually she's in Mufti all this week.

MrsOaken,

The point I was making was slightly different.

The school had a large proportion - up to 30% - of Travellers, some settled on a neighbouring large site, some travelling. The Traveller community are, often, viewed with some suspicion, and as a group, by settled folk - seen as 'them', not 'us', if you will.

Putting on the school uniform instantly made the Traveller children 'us' not 'them' - to a completely different degree from simply turning up in similar looking non-uniform clothes to local families.

It's hard to describe, if you haven't seen it, but it was very tangible.

Like mrz, I am puzzled as to how a uniform - dresses / shorts / skirts and short sleeved tops in the summer, warm sweatshirts, trousers / skirts and tights with a fleece over it in the winter - prevents you from adapting what a child wears to the weather?

There were very few problems over fashion antics, everyone wore jeans and tops.

Goodness, how, err, ..........conformist and lacking in individuality!

noramum Fri 12-Jul-13 14:05:51
"I am from Germany so uniform was alien to me whe DD started Reception. Two years later I can see advantages. And I can also confirm that in her class there are 30 individuals and not a mass of not thinking conformed idiots.

Uniform is not restricted to military. Lots of shops have a dress code, restaurants and hotels, leisure centre, reception and security of large companies. Do to forget NHS and police. Do you suggest every organisation where people have to "obey" a dres code are threatening the individualism of their employees? "

Noramum has said exactly what I was going to say. I come from Sweden and I've had precisely this experience. I have not found British children more conformist or less able to think for themselves.

To me it is more like the dress code in a shop or overalls worn on a building site than a soldier's uniform. It is my children's work clothes, just like my husband's overalls and high viz jacket are his work clothes: they don't suddenly turn him into someone who can't think for himself.

Expensive uniform can no doubt be a problem, but in most schools the great beauty of uniform is that it is cheaper and more hard-wearing than most of the clothes dc would otherwise be wearing. And easy to pick up second-hand, at least around here.

I don't think Swedes should insist on having uniform introduced there: if it works well for them without it, that is fine. But it's a pretty conformist culture, just in more subtle ways. And incidentally, I was bullied over clothes there throughout my school career.

When I visited an English school as a teen my mother insisted on ideological grounds that I should not be made to wear uniform though the school offered to lend me one. With hindsight I find that rather ironic: if I have had any problems with independence in life it has been because I have found it hard to break free of my (lovely) mother's influence. Wearing a grey skirt for a few months would have done absolutely diddly squat for my conformist tendencies: in fact, I now believe that being encouraged to sometimes conform to outside influences would have done me good as it would have diluted the all-pervading influence of my own family and the way they did things.

Uniform is ok, but my kids would much rather not wear it. As a parent, I prefer no uniform as it is easier, cheaper and more comfortable.

LOL at uniform preventing the spoiling of their 'good clothes'.

My child is at a private school where they don't have a uniform. I have always been a stickler for proper uniform so it took a while to get used to not having one.

My child is so much happier without a uniform but I can't explain why. There isn't any 'brand one upping' which surprised me, even among the Y7 and Y8 girls. The kids dress in a huge variety of ways but always in a practical way as they do a lot of out door learning. Hoodies and jeans are by far the most common clothes most of the year, right now, t-shirts and shorts or sports clothes are worn by everyone. With so much outdoor learning, it's easier to dress in normal clothes. I haven't spent any extra money on clothes for my child and there is never any issue in the mornings with deciding what to wear.

teacher - I'm struggling to articulate well on this (have already written and deleted several posts!) but in short, what you are saying is that it's good to remove a part of a child's identity (in this case, that s/he is a Traveller, which is somehoe identifiable by their clothing) and make them the same as everyone else? Who aren't all the same anyway?

Extrapolating wildy here, it almost sounds like saying to a Polish child - well, if you lose your accent you'll be one of us. Or to Muslim girl, if you take your headscarf off you'll fit in. Both of which would be pretty appalling things to say, would they not? Tolerance and acceptance of our differences is surely the better lesson.

I'm probably over-thinking this massively.

*somehow

No, I haven't explained it well either - because I realise that I had managed to imply that a Traveller is identifiable from their clothes, which isn't true in the slightest.

What my experience was, was that the school had an 'identity as a community' - a character, a set of values, an ethos, a way of being, much more than a set of rules or a single building - that was greater than the sum of all the individuals within it, even though all of those individual identities were preserved and valued (this doesn't happen in all schools, i will entirely agree at this point. But in this school it did - value for the individual but also the creation of a strong and inclusive community identity).

One of the 'tricks' that the school managed to pull off very successfully was in bringing together many very disparate 'out of school' communities and making them all feel part of the school one - and I cite the Travellers in particular because they were a community which lived very separate lives and because all previous generations had been unschooled but all our local traveller children were now attending school.

The uniform was a symbol of this - and only a symbol, it wouldn't have happened if there hadn't been more to it than just the uniform.

I suppose what I'm saying was that uniform isn't sufficient on its own to make someone part of a new community BUT if the new community is exceptionally good at welcoming people in, then the uniform can become a recognised 'shorthand' for 'you've joined us'. A bit like you can be a Scout without a necker or woggle but acquiring these has become a shorthand for 'you've joined'.

It's not about removing Traveller or settled identity, in any way. it's about creating, in school, an identity of 'belonging to this school' which does not in any way remove any other identity but is a new and separate 'group' identity. It's precisely because none of the individual identitities that you mention - nationality, religion, cultural - are solely defined by clothing that the 'transceding' eidentity of belonging to the school leaves those unaffected while also creating an inclusive group identity. Which happens to be 'those who wear the sweatshirt', but that is simply a symbolic shorthand for 'those who belong in this school community, wherein all are welcomed'.

Of course, you can achieve a community without any visible symbol of belonging. But a visible symbol can have an instantly transformative effect in some circumstances.

I am not from the UK, I had my primary and secondary education in a European country and I can tell you, the dilemma over choosing your own clothes every single day and the worry over what item of your clothing your classmates were going to mock next was AGONY. I am delighted my DC attend UK schools with uniforms for practical, ideological and emotional reasons.

teacher - I understand perfectly, now, thank you! A very articulate post, and I can see the effect you are talking about. Sorry for being so obtuse.

However, I still think at primary, which was what topic this post is in, for me, I'd prefer no uniform! And I still can't articulate why (is saying that the children in Shirley Hughes' books never wear uniform at school a good enough reason? Probably not).