An article talks about a woman named Amanda and her daughter Sophie, who have quite the experience with school uniforms.  Amanda has two kids who started school at their local Prep to Year 12 public school. At this school, the girls were required to wear a certain dress and the boys had a short/shirt option they were required to wear as their formal uniforms. Amanda found it “bizarre” that Sophie could not wear a shirt and shorts like her brother.

She then brought this up to the schools “P&C”, thinking they would agree with her (they did not). The P&C did not support any change to the uniform policy. Amanda then sent out a survey to the girls of the school. In the survey, 51% of the girls did not like the dress, 81% of the girls said they liked the short/shirt option and would wear it if it was available to them. Amanda took these results to the P&C and again they shut her down. The topic of having “gender neutral” uniforms then came to play. Schools must offer these, so the principal said if girls wanted to wear the shirt/short option they would have to wear the boy uniform.

To prove her point, Amanda ordered the boy uniform for Sophie. It was a big struggle to get these clothes for her daughter, but when Amanda finally did, the massive letters saying “BOYS UNIFORM” were written across the top. So that next school year, Sophie was sent to school wearing this shirt. “On day two, as she was approaching the girls’ toilets, she was stopped by an older girl and told that she had to use the boys’ toilets as she was in the boys’ uniform.” states Amanda. For Amanda, this was the last straw and she took her kids both out of the school. Schools should not require school uniforms for their students to wear. 

The amount of schools requiring school uniforms is increasing yearly. Journalist Resources shows statistics on how schools having uniforms has increased.[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“Decades ago, uniforms were mostly worn by students who went to private or parochial schools. But as local school boards have focused more on improving standardized test scores and campus safety, a growing number have begun requiring school uniforms.”[/perfectpullquote]

 In 2015-2016, just about 20% of schools required school uniforms. The uniforms may not be the khaki pants and polo sweaters you are all thinking of, but instead they could be from khaki pant and sweaters to skirts and solid color shirts. Some schools could even require just jeans to wear. Uniforms can slowly adapt more to the style of what students like to wear.

Takes Away Freedom of Expression

The 1st amendment is all about your freedoms as a citizen of the United States of America. Having school uniforms will take away some of these freedoms. Freedom of expression is very important when it comes to teenagers. Some teens feel this is the best way for them to express themselves. When the freedom of choosing your own clothes is taken away, the freedom of expression is taken away with it. Part of students way to show who they are is from what they wear to school. According to a pro/con article by Challen Stephens on school uniforms, giving uniforms to children at young ages takes away their creativity.

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Children should be encouraged to be expressive and think outside the box with their clothing choice.

Students also like to choose what they are wearing and like to shop to pick out clothes for school. I know my favorite part of going back to school is going shopping for all new outfits. School uniforms would take this away as students would not need clothes for school.

Learning Good Clothing Decisions for Future

Clothing choices is something that will stick with you for your whole life. When you are young, your parents choose your clothes. A pro/con article by Challen Stephens again talks about as you get older and have responsibility of choosing the appropriate clothes, your clothing choices are decided upon you. Whether the choices are good or bad decisions, it is your choice. With school uniforms, outfits are decided for you. There are certain things you have to wear and you never get to pick your own style. Then “the real world” comes upon you, and you will have to choose your own clothes and decide what will be appropriate for the situation. Having school uniforms in early education takes away this practice of choosing outfits. If kids and teens always have their outfits picked out for them, they never get the opportunity to prepare themselves for what is to come in the future. Students should learn earlier in life to make good clothing decisions before it comes back to not be good in the future. Kids need responsibility to start when they are young, not having school uniforms can help kids learn on what things are appropriate and not appropriate to wear to school. School uniforms gives kids no responsibility on choosing outfits.

Big Topic Gender Neutral

Lately in the world we live in, gender classification have becoming a big issue. Some people do not like to be classified as a certain gender. There has been different talk about things like “gender neutral bathrooms.” This is for the purpose of gender non-conforming people.

This can relate back to school uniforms. Especially in high school and middle school, more people are not identifying themselves as a specific gender. According to Daily Mail, “A total of around 150 schools have introduced gender neutral uniforms to enable children to experience ‘equality.’” With the topic on school uniforms, some students would not want to be forced to wear certain clothes related back to males and females. For example, girls may prefer not to wear the feminine uniforms that are required.[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] The “girl uniform” can be overly- sexualized in media and society and makes girls uncomfortable.[/perfectpullquote]

 This can cause conflict between the students and the school. To make things easier for everyone, just let students choose what they want to wear. Then everyone will be happy. Yes, schools can have guidelines (dress codes) to insure appropriate clothing, but just let the students wear what they want. Students already have to stress enough about things going on at school, they should not have to worry about their uniforms as well. Like the article with Amanda and her daughter Sophie, school uniforms need to be gender neutral, these ones were not and it eventually led to Sophie getting bullied and Amanda taking her two children out of the school.

Uniforms Should be Required in schools

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On the other side of this big debate, many people do like the idea of school uniforms. There are benefits to them too. An article on benefits of school uniforms talks about the different ways they can help students. They make school morning routines a lot simpler. Choosing outfits can be very hard for some people who tend to spend too much time trying to pick out the perfect outfit. School uniforms can take away this problem. Students can just wake up, put on their uniform and continue with their day.

Some parents run on tight budgets, school uniforms can be expensive to buy, but compared to buying a whole new wardrobe students like to buy for school, they would be a lot cheaper. Parents can save lots of money by having school uniforms. However, uniforms can come to be pretty pricey as well. Rebecca Lake wrote an article about different statistics collected with school uniforms. She stated that uniforms can cost between $140 and $160 on a child per outfit. 

The Daily Gazette says how school uniforms can also decrease crime rate. A report from Long Beach, California shows an decrease in crime after having school uniforms. Reports of assaults with deadly weapons went down by 50% , fighting incidents went down by 51%, possession of weapons dropped by 52%, sex offenses dropped 74%,  and many other crimes dropped as well. 

The same article on benefits of school uniforms says how school uniforms make all children equal and “there is a decrease in bullying and teasing.” The Daily Gazette says how students are getting bullied because their parents cannot afford to buy the latest trends and expensive clothing. Another pros/cons article says the opposite. They say “Bullying occurs whether students wear uniforms or not. The root cause of bullying should be addressed.” School uniforms can stop some forms of bullying like talking about what people are wearing behind their back. In the long term, bullying will still occur no matter the case. It happens in every school and adding school uniforms will not stop it all. Like said in the video below, students still compare themselves on who wore the outfit better which can lead to bullying.  Schools should instead be addressing the real reasons behind bullying because it is not all because of what someone wears to school. That could be a part of it but definitely not all of it. All of these pros do not compare to the cons of school uniforms. Teenage years are hard and students need to express themselves. Having school uniforms takes this completely away.   

Good Morning America Video

Here is a video from Good Morning America with Michelle Borah, and education psychologist, and Robin Silverman, a child and teen development specialist. “At a time where teens and preteens want to express themselves that clothes provide a vehicle of benign vehicle to allow them to express themselves and say I’m different without having to approach more risky ways of saying the same thing” -Robin Silverman. “Students feel that it allows for a lot of comparison” also says Robin Silverman in the video. This shows how school uniforms deny students the right to express themselves and can result in comparison. 

Survey on School Uniforms

A survey by Scholastic was conducted on if students would like uniforms or not. In the central area of the United States, there was 573  votes for no school uniforms and 137 votes to have school uniforms. This is pretty much same with all of the other regions of the United States. The only one that was different was the Northwest, 9 people said no school uniforms while 14 said yes. Overall the majority of the United States says no to school uniforms. This just shows to prove simply that students do not want school uniforms. Why add on more stress of uniforms to students when they already have enough stressful things going on at school?

Conclusion

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There are many pros and cons to having school uniforms. In my opinion, the cons outweigh the pros. Yes, school uniforms can make mornings easier and and can help save parents financially. This does not compare to a student’s freedom of expression which is very important when choosing outfits and how students express themselves. Schools should not have uniforms also simply because the students do not want them. From my personal experiences, all of my friends and I would gladly prefer to not have school uniforms. As life goes on and you have to start working eventually, you will have more limited things on what you can wear. Do not start with kids now.

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