Seems very much like indoctrination to get kids to “fall in line” and enforced conformity, to try to remove independent thinking.
I’ve always hated the idea of that. What do you think about it?
Schools in my area had a dress code, and my school almost succeeded at requiring a select jacket model as a must (done by a single local company connected to a school admin, wink-wink), but faced backlash over poor price/quality balance 🙃
One of the unusual upsides, many men well in their 20s, who otherwise couldn’t be bothered, had their high school formal suits to wear on future funerals and weddings. I was one of them and that was handy.
If the uniform should be there, to ensure it’s not hostile, it may be:
- Of basic rules. Formal dresses, dark under the waist line, white over it.
- Civilian models, without a glimpse of cop/military details and ranks, insignias.
- Common to everyone without any color differentiation (and requirements to buy it in exact shade of a color).
- Rather cheap or even subsidized, shared from older to younger kids, because children are frequently growing out of them and it’s a bummer to buy ten+ sets of dresses.
- Purposely unisex and non-sexualized models.
Yep. They also seem to completely ignore neurodiverse people; I don’t know what I’d have done if my school had uniforms.
Nah, there’s a place to exercise your sense of fashion like special events in school. Good schools encourage independent thinking in other avenues. Also, authoritarianism and conformity don’t always go together.
Oh absolutely can be, and is absolutely often used as such.
However, as usual depends on the context. Properly subsidized it can help students not only gave greater pride in their appearance and success in classes if you aren’t having to worry about not getting good clothes or any that fit properly.
On the other hand it can be cripplingly over expensive and cheap ass.
For me, the uniform was liberating. People who wanted to bully me needed to find something more substantive than just my clothes. Bullies tend to be stupid, so this was hard for them.
If your individuality is all tied up in your physical appearance, try to develop your mind a bit. I am nonconformist in a thousand ways, each of which is more important than how i dress.
I didn’t have good casual clothes in school.
On the other hand, the uniforms were priced to the point of extortion, so I’d say they came off as elitist flexing, if not authoritarian.
The only winner is getting kids decent clothes that aren’t expensive or drab. And yes, there absolutely is a middle ground for that.
I loved school uniforms as a deeply autistic young man who really, REALLY struggled with all the silent peer pressures of fashion.
There was an outfit I could wear without half a thought every day and no one cared.
Honestly I kinda liked our school uniforms when I was a kid. Course for us it was just like jeans and a solid color Polo. Maybe khakis were allowed as well, I don’t recall. Made things easy made things simple.
School uniforms level the outward socioeconomic presentation of students.
If it weren’t school uniforms, then the oppositional-defiant disorder would present in some students another way. Not statistically relevant.
It’s only authoritarian if the teachers / administration also wear a similar uniform, but slightly different to denote rank.
Otherwise, it’s actually accidentally kind of socialistic, in that the divisions of class between your peers becomes less obvious, and there’s more cohesion with your fellow students versus those in authority. It’s easier for the students to rally together against something when they’re all wearing the same thing.
Otherwise, it’s actually beneficial to authoritarians to have no dress code, because student cliques would strengthen, and infighting would be more common.
For the USA, think about how both major parties use color to help separate people. If the colors of Democrats and Republicans were the same though, the division would be weaker.
Uniforms have historically been used to unify groups rather than to control them.
It’s still forcing people to wear something they don’t want.
Socialism isn’t the opposite of authoritarian. It’s always authoritarian to mandate uniforms, it has benefits as you and others have outlined but you are stripping people of their individuality and mandating what people can do that’s classic authoritarianism
divisions of class between your peers becomes less obvious
Nope! Kids will always find ways around that.
I always hated it growing up, too. My school didn’t even have a uniform, only a dress code, and I hated that, too.
But my kids go to a school with a uniform, and now I can see the advantages:
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this school subsidizes the uniforms heavily, even to the point of giving them away outright to students in need, so it represents a form of clothing that is affordable for all
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kids can’t fight with parents about what they wear to school, because it’s predetermined
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every kid wears the same thing, which helps smooth out class-indicators: kids don’t get bullied for wearing hand-me-downs or unfashionable clothes because everyone wears the same thing
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makes it very easy to determine who is supposed to be on campus and who is not; similarly, since the school has a big emphasis on outside-the-classroom learning, makes it very easy to identify students out on fieldwork
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saves me money since the uniforms are unisex and my son can wear the hand-me-downs of his older sisters
And to address your criticism: Yes, uniforms tend to promote group cohesion but that’s not always a bad thing. It encourages collaboration over competition, for example.
Point 3 has always been a great equaliser. I grew up in a household that was tight for money, and I never felt that my school wear defined my “class”, quite the opposite.
Now I’m older and am in a comparatively fortunate position financially, I’m happy to kit out my kids in a uniform. I don’t really want them flashing brand names or in an arms race to look the most fashionable, and I don’t want the less fortunate folk in the class to feel left behind.
If a uniform is plain and inexpensive, I think the positives outweigh the negatives.
As a parent of 2 kids under 10, at this age they don’t care about brands. The school uniforms are much more expensive than any t shirts or shorts or track pants from Kmart or bigW (Aussie retailers). Poorer kids still get hand me downs and second hand, whereas richer kids get brand new. Most kids are only-child these days, so the concept of hand me downs is less prevalent within a family.
For teens, I can understand that point, but for teens I think self expression and exploring identity are key parts of growing up.
My oldest is a senior in highschool. From what I have observed, appearance – especially for teenage girls – is less about self expression and more about seeking approval from other girls. Clothing is entirely a status symbol.
There’s often a few girls who are the “trend setters”, a much larger group of “followers” that basically look like carbon copies of one another, and yet another group that doesn’t follow the latest “trend” because they either can’t afford to or (much less often) don’t care.
My daughter is obsessed with looks, as are most of her peers. Trying desperately to fit in because she’s not yet mature enough to realize that it doesn’t matter if all the other girls “like” her. It only really matters if she likes herself.
I’ve told her, only half joking, that she will know a guy is good boyfriend material when he asks her which books she’s read lately.
I guess it depends on the strictness of a dress code but theres usually ways to express and explore even with a set clothing expectation.
Parts of growing up that are intentionally suppressed
About the class indicators thing: don’t people find a way around that by wearing expensive watches, jewelry or accessories?
Usually people find a way to value signal imho.
In my experienfe they just verbally brag about how rich their parents are lmao.
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There are valid arguments for and against, but I really don’t think the word ‘authoritarianism’ is at all applicable here.
Definitely applicable.
Entire atmosphere feels a lot more weirder because everyone is forced to wear the same thing. Reminds me of when I was in China, where they forced little kids to wear the little red scarf, which symbolized communism.
In your example it can be. But if no nationalistic rationale is behind the uniforms that are worn than it’s not authoritarian.
So it can be but it’s not a given.
I think is preparation for a white collar job. Everyone in the office usually use a uniform and there is nothing wrong with that. I feel like it is an exaggeration
Exactly, preparing for wage slavery, by re-enforcing conformity and “don’t you dare step out of line” from a young age. Authoritarianism.
Btw, China is a State Capitalist regime.
Conforming to society does not equal authoritarianism
So you want everyone in society to be rogue and fuck the system that keeps things moving? I will never understand this mindset dude.
“If we don’t force everyone to wear the same clothes the fabric of society will collapse!”
Is that what you’re saying?
Tbf, it is about as valid as saying school uniforms are part of a plot to make us all slaves.
It really isn’t. You don’t think our near total control of the ability of children to make decisions about their lives has any effect on how they behave when they get older? Nor that this enforced system of obedience has intended consequences on those children when they become adults?
Soccer uniforms have to be same color too it’s not “authoritarianism.”
Also idk about psychology but just a tiny bit of cohesion is much better over extreme individualism no?
School uniforms enforced that everyone has to wear arbitrarily vs uniforms to differentiate the two teams in a spectator sport.
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Americans had “unity” after 9/11
Uh, no we didn’t. Source: am American, lived through that period.
Yes we had a brief period of unity (and solidarity with NYC) following 9/11, but as soon as the American War Machine woke up, my country was intensely divided.
And even then I am assuming muslim Americans were still left out on that small period of unity.
Not at all. On the contrary, I found them quite liberating, for 2 main reasons:
- not having to decide what to wear every day
- I was in a British private school, where students came from upper middle class to upper class backgrounds. A lot of the really rich students were shallow, superficial, and cruel. If we didn’t have uniforms we would have had a serious bullying problem against those who couldn’t afford to wear high end/designer brands.
The only downside is that we had to pay for the uniforms, and they were quite expensive compared to the awful materials they were made of. I had 3 sets on rotation.
I suppose it probably seems strange to an outsider but in a country where it’s the norm for every school, it didn’t feel like that to me at all. I see it more as an equaliser? In a way I also kind of miss not having to decide what to wear every day.
Honestly, my main concern about school uniforms is that I think they ought to be standardised and subsidised, because the expense can sometimes be a problem.
Counterpoint: Americans would say the same - “I suppose it probably seems strange to an outsider but in a country where it’s the norm for every school, it didn’t feel like that to me at all.” - about pledging their undying loyalty every morning to the flag on the wall of every single classroom starting at the age of 6.
Not to say that it’s the same thing at all, indoctrination on that scale is completely different from a freaking school uniform, but the base is the same - it doesn’t seem weird because it’s what you were told was normal.
As an adult, I can see some good arguments for uniforms in this thread, but as a kid, I stopped saying the Pledge of Allegiance in middle school and swore that nobody could make me wear a tie like my dad had to for school. One of the big things that bothered me about school dress codes as I got older was the inherent misogyny on display. Some rules from my high school dress code, for example:
During Spring/Summer, boys may wear t-shirts and shorts. Girls must wear pants or skirts. Skirts must be below the knee. Girls are allowed to wear t-shirts, but only if the sleeves are at least 4 inches long and must be a unisex crew neck shirt. Shirts with a v neck or that show the collarbone are too revealing and are not allowed.
Also in the US is the issue that school uniforms are universally a private school thing, and so create a divide of elitism as a clear signal of those whose parents are wealthy enough to send their kids to a private school vs kids who go to public schools. Those divides start at home, though, and I don’t know how much a school uniform does to deprogram that kind of rhetoric from your parents and their friends.
Americans would say the same … about pledging their undying loyalty every morning to the flag on the wall of every single classroom starting at the age of 6.
Except they don’t. I and everyone I’ve ever discussed it with think it’s weird as hell.
