Should School Uniforms be Required?

I disagree, uniforms in school are not useful or beneficial. They tend to serve a superficial purpose and don’t solve the underlying problems that they seem to be targeting. They also tend to benefit the school, more so than its pupils; by allowing said schools to be able to control the way in which they are perceived, and by tailoring the clothing choices the students can make. It also strips the choices available for people who may not have the means to spend money so leisurely, people who before could just get by on the clothing they had from the year prior. Thereby, limiting their selection by narrowing it down to only a few select clothing brands, which can put people that already live way beyond their means in a hard position. And while there might be ways to target this with things like charity, and funds, it ultimately forms a problem which wouldn’t have been present in the first place had it not been for the mandatory use of uniforms in schools. This of course only benefits the uniform companies whose revenue combined is somewhere around a billion each year. They are also some of the loudest advocates for the use of uniforms in schools because they have a personal stake in the matter.

The use of uniforms within schools seems to have formed out of a need for discipline and to make students be on a level playing field, this way the students wouldn’t feel peer pressure to convey a sense of opulence by spending money on things their parents couldn’t afford. They were also implemented as a way to deter things like bullying and displaying gang colors within schools. The first of which has been largely disproven to have positive conclusions, and instead seemed to have increased bullying drastically, and the second of which has had dismal positive effects, and served no value in schools whose uniforms included colors like blue, and red.

They also instill tribalism and strip away individuality by presenting the idea that sameness should be something to be striven for, and valued, rather than individual thoughts and actions. This can also be detrimental when it comes to childhood development. Since teens are in their transition from childhood to adulthood, the clothes they wear can be extremely significant, by limiting said clothes you also limit their freedom to choose, which can leave them unprepared for the adult world.

This is explored in Erik Erikson’s stages of psycho-social development. The stage of adolescence is seen as a very important one, in this particular phase the person asks who he is and what he can be. He can either develop an identity or role confusion.

Clothing is regarded as one of the means of building an identity, without the freedom to choose, the development of such – as well as his transition to adulthood – can be severely dampened.

It seems that uniforms have a low chance of having positive effects, and do more to benefit the companies than they do the kids and the parents. They also do little to benefit bullying and serve dismal or no purpose in terms of eradicating violence in schools. They also teach kids that sameness should be valued and that standing out can have negative effects, as well as severely dampen their development well into adulthood. Do you think that uniforms have a higher positive impact, If so, why?

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