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Uniforms are cheaper. They equalize dress. They prevent unwanted types of dress. They identify truants. No real problems that I see, except tucking in a shirt is taking this a step too far.

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Middle school sucks, by the way.

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I don’t have much of an opinion on it. I don’t think it’s oppressive, but I also don’t know if it will do that much good at stopping problems. It certainly won’t stop kids from making fun of each other; they’ll find a reason.

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I’d say where the school in Shakopee went wrong was in a public relations sense by giving a reason for making the change: no matter what “reason” is given (discipline, leveling the economic playing field, school unity, fewer distractions, all the usual reasons), there are going to be some parents who are going to fight it, or come up with an excuse why their kid should not be “punished” for the actions of others, or its not going to work to solve the stated “problem”, or make up some b.s. excuse like they’re concerned about the overweight kids feelings (riiiiiight). Whatever happened to: “These are the rules, an authority figure is telling you what the rules are, and you will follow the rules”?

And for the kids who don’t like the uniforms, well, take a life lesson from it: pay attention in school and get good grades, because if you don’t, well you could be wearing a uniform of a different type, like they wear at the McDonald’s.

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The boys don’t give a shit.

They also have “out of uniform” days and the biggest issue there is some kids coming with really raggy clothes on

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However, I agree that kids will always push the boundaries of any rules. I did it myself by wearing high tops and ginormous earrings with my plaid skirt and cardigan. I also think that kids will always find ways to differentiate themselves, and when you take away standard avenues, like clothing, they’ll find other ways of doing it via behavior that you might not like (that was my brother’s route). On the bullying front, it always seemed to me that uniforms inspire worse bullying. If you take away obvious things for kids to make fun of, they’ll just hit lower. If they can’t make fun of clothes, they’ll aim for people’s bodies. Or their faces. Or their hair. Or whatever. So, overall, I think that this is a band-aid for larger issues.

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The difference led me to believe that more stringent enforcement encourages more bad behavior.

Interesting. I once slipped up language-wise in front of a friend’s kid who then apparently repeated what I had said. Instead of immediately scolding them they just let it go and ignored it. They mentioned that by ignoring it the child doesn’t realize it’s something that garners attention and thus is pointless to repeat.

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At least I learned how to use a razor.

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I still have no idea how to dress myself.

That’s because you were homeschooled you loser.

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That’s only the tip of the iceberg. This private school (with very posh students) was also the only one in the district with metal detectors at every door and police officers patrolling the halls at all times. It was the single most violent school in the area.

My school, on the other hand, enforced almost nothing and it was sublimely peaceful (for a highschool). The difference led me to believe that more stringent enforcement encourages more bad behavior. The best thing to do is to let it go. The less attention the school pays to it, the less it happens.

“Yo! I’m so gansta!”
“meh…”
“aww… be scared of me?”
“no.”
“just a little?”
“…”
“…”

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Examples of dress codes are all over the place – sports teams, military, etc. – but those are voluntary examples. Even with these being voluntary, I often run into kids while I’m umpiring who wear their baseball uniforms untucked or leave their batting glove in their back pocket while they’re pitching. Now, expand that to the entire population and you start to have some real issues with enforcement.

So I don’t know if the uniform would really fix anything, but I sure like to think it would help.

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Make everyone wear white t-shirts and white pants. Easy to bleach ;)

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Watching my daughter as she puts together her little outfits everyday and plans what she’s going to wear the night before.. what a collosal waste of time and energy. Especially when we disagree with her choices and have to “discuss” it would be much eaiser if all this drama just went away and I could tell her exactly what to wear everyday on the first day of school and never have to worry about it again. Nurtures her shallowness if you ask me.

There’s also the argument I like that this puts kids on a level in school who may not be, economically, socially etc otherwise.

Individualism comes from within.

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The idea being that you remove a bone of contention. Dress becomes way too big of an issue for kids to poke at each other about. I’ve thought the idea of uniforms in schools should have always been there.

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One thing I find rather humorous:

“but parents are concerned that it may hurt the feelings of overweight students.”

Instead of being concerned about how a shirt makes them look, perhaps these parents can focus their energies on helping these kids lose weight….you know…give them healthy foods to eat, kick them off the PS3 and off the internet. Ahh, nevermind. That would never work. Let’s just help them hide their problems.

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