<p>As a working adult, I proudly choose to wear the uniform and badge of a federal agency. As a student, I would have fiercely resisted any attempt to force me to wear a school uniform.</p>
<p>There are two sets of people who wear uniforms in our culture:</p>
<p>a) Those who choose to join a uniformed organization in order to define membership and esprit de corps - police officers, soldiers, sports teams, etc.</p>
<p>b) Those who are forced to wear a uniform in order to strip them of their individuality - prisoners.</p>
<p>Choosing to wear a uniform is one thing. Being forced to wear a uniform is something else entirely.</p>
<p>As long as students are required to attend a public school, attempting to impose a uniform upon them will remain misguided and inappropriate.</p>
<p>I will say that at our school, it is disproportionately the lower income families who ask for uniforms. To me, that’s a pretty strong vote in their favor. So often, diverse schools become places that cater to the whims of the wealthiest families. My kid went to a school like that, and I was pretty appalled by some of the lessons he learned. If the families who need the most help, and are most likely to struggle, and have kids most at risk, tell us that having a uniform makes things easier for them, then at least this once the affluent parents can accommodate. Or they can choose another school, and open up a spot in our high performing school for a child without other good options.</p>
<p>No one is required to attend public school. You can home school or attend private or parochial school. It is complusory education, not compulsory attendance at a state provided school.</p>
<p>A comment obviously made by someone with wealth enough to afford those three alternatives. Many, if not the majority of American families, are not.</p>
<p>Your post amounts to “Poor people’s kids should wear uniforms. If they don’t like it, they should become rich.”</p>
<p>Well nothing here has caused me to rethink my position on uniforms. My son went K-8 to a uniform requiring charter school. Despite the fact that their rationale for uniforms was essentially Uniform Good I played along and sent a well uniformed kid to school every day. I didn’t see the point then and I still don’t. But since the last kid graduated from high school last month and my 20 year association with the school district is at an end I’ll happily call the question moot, at least for me.</p>
<p>Hardly, since my S attended a private school that required a uniform. BTW–it had a program that provided full scholarships to qualified need students. </p>
<p>Based on my experience (I attended non-uniform public and my S attended uniformed private), I would suggest that all public schools adopt a uniform requirement.</p>
<p>Your family made that choice. I support your right as a family to make that choice. You don’t have the right to make that choice for other families.</p>
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<p>So what? Some poor people attend Harvard, too - that doesn’t mean every university in America offers full-need financial aid to every student who applies.</p>
<p>Note the word “qualified” in your statement - I assume that means there were many applicants who didn’t qualify.</p>
<p>DD is also into horses…and from the very beginning we taught her that there were working clothes and non-working clothes. It would never occur to her to wear her barn clothing to school or her school clothing to the barn. Not to mentioned…no barn shoes in school or the house!</p>
<p>I’m sure it’s handy to have two seperate wardrobes.
That isn’t always an option.</p>
<p>Barrons, if your post #88 was in response to my post above it, I’m not taking a position on school uniforms. I was just kidding around because we homeschooled, and the assumption made above by another poster doesn’t necessarily hold true in reality.</p>
<p>I wish I was homeschooled. Or go to a private school. My parents have neither the money nor the resources to do so. My socioeconomic class forces me to stay in public school, where i have no choice but to wear a dumb uniform.</p>
<p>Honestly, I don’t feel like I’m fifteen anymore. When I work on the weekends (and will be working this summer) I’m supposed to wear a certain attire appropriate for the job-this I understand. But wearing uniform to school? I don’t think so.</p>
<p>Deborah T, for most families it is a luxury to afford having a parent able to stay home and take care of the kids, to include homeschooling. Two-income families are the norm today.</p>
<p>I was homeschooled for a short time, and was fortunate to live in a family with a single income that was sufficient to support us. For the majority of American families, that is simply not the case.</p>
<p>Polar, I’m not claiming this would be a workable option for every family, but to imply that families who homeschool are automatically wealthy is inaccurate.</p>
<p>Thrift store ‘work clothes’ made it an option for us. She’d find a pair of $5.00 horsey jeans. And the local Goodwill has 50% off every Tuesday…so with a bit of planning, the jeans were really only $2.50.</p>
<p>Hence, why prisoners are forced to wear uniforms - they are dehumanized, physically and metaphorically stripped of their identity en route to becoming an identical number in a steel cage. Wonder why prisoners routinely tattoo themselves? The reasons are obvious: it’s one of the only ways they can outwardly express their identity which cannot not be stripped from them by prison authorities.</p>
<p>Those of us who choose to wear uniforms, on the other hand, are voluntarily identifying ourselves with an organization - we are expressing our solidarity and pride in membership. I consciously made the choice to pursue a uniformed position and I consider it an honor to don my Forest Service greens and pin the federal shield to my breast each morning.</p>
<p>My identity, my clothing, my choice. As it should be for each of us.</p>
<p>Every school with a uniform policy that I’m familiar with has some version of a uniform donation program, where outgrown items can be donated and needed items can be picked up for free.</p>
<p>Actually, there is a grain of truth to the implied idea that uniforms related to these crime/safety concerns. According to what I read today, there was a statement made by Bill Clinton in 1999 that spurred the growth in uniform public schools and “strict dress codes.” </p>
<p>He apparently mentioned that there was research that showed that the safety aspect of public school life changed greatly for the better when uniforms were introduced including a marked decrease in sexual assault of grade school children.</p>
<p>The idea that private or homeschooled equals wealthy is wrong. And, as mentiuoned there usually is a uniform donation program.</p>
<p>Also, public schools generally are governed by school boards of elected officials and these boards are limited/directed by state legislative enactments. They decide what time your kid has to be at school, how long he or she has to be there, what will and won’t be served in the cafeteria, and what are subjects that must be taken and yes, dress codes–including uniforms.</p>
<p>As such the citizens have a say in the school policies. When a school board allows a public school to go “uniform” it is a political decision in which the voters have a say. The voter who doesn’t like the outcome of the elected school board’s policy decisions has the same remedies all unhappy voters have.</p>
<p>My sister’s kids went to a charter school for a while that had uniforms… no objections to a charter school choosing to have them-- nobody HAS to go there, but the prices of those things STUNG. When I was growing up I got a ton of hand-me-down clothes from older cousins and friends, we could bargain hunt and shop clearance, but every year my sister’s boy and girl outgrew their uniforms and needed new ones all over again and there were no choices but to keep buying the expensive uniforms. Their uniforms cost WAY more a year than I ever spent on a years wardrobe in my life. This is a small, impoverished down with all of about three commercial buildings, no consignment shop for miles. It sucked! In my sister’s case, this was better than sending them to the local public school because the education was far superior. But she chose that-- and that’s fine, there’s no problem with that. In her shoes if that had been the ONLY choice, I’d move if I could. It was NOT easy scraping together the money for those uniforms and it was a weight on the entire extended family-- and then of course the kids still needed a wardrobe for all their after school activities, so the uniforms were just extra on top of what we would have already had to buy.</p>
<p>The sad thing is that some charter schools do sneaky things to discourage low income families from enrolling their kids. Choosing uniforms that are exorbitantly priced can be one such technique. </p>
<p>Our uniform shirts are $10 new, with second hand ones available and free ones for families who can’t afford to buy them. Uniforms don’t have to be expensive.</p>