school dress codes: classic or dud?

Yes. Uniforms are evil.

I had to wear uniforms through most of school.

I'm rather of two minds about it. Half of me was relieved at the pressure of display being taken off me. The other half worries that I never really learned how to dress myself because it was too easy to either lapse into uniform or rebel against it.

But uniforms/dress codes are good in another way, in that they force kids to be creative if they wish to express themselves. It's a good lesson to learn how to bend the rules, the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.

In hindsight I'm glad I had to wear a uniform at school. So much potential embarassment saved.

http://www.80stees.com/images/products/Save_Ferris_t-shirt.jpg

the sagging-pants code is the big difference i can see between then and now. i'm confused about "touching the floor" though.

classic

I was always glad that I had to wear a school uniform, but even at the time I realised I was getting off lightly, because our uniform was grey and maroon with a white blouse, rather than two different shades of brown with a green blouse, or some other hideous thing. Also we didn't have to wear a specific coat, and we didn't have to wear hats or a school crest or anything like that. If I'd had to wear those things, I might feel differently.

1. pants must not sag below the waist and must not touch the floor

Those be some saggy pants!

We had termly uniform inspections in which our housemistress would check that our skirts were the regulation length, i.e. that the hemlines touched the floor while we were kneeling.

golly

It was a ghastly uniform, too. A horrible cabbage green colour, as a random picture from the school website shows:

http://www.cheltladiescollege.org/images/025.jpg

The first school I went to was FERRY FERRY posh. (Some of my fellow students were driven to school in Lamborghini yo! Daddy was notary or lawyer. If mommy was cleaning lady, ridicule galore. Thou shall not speak in dialect, even on playground...) The uniform was also extremely strict: pants only in winter, no other colours (even in hairbands or socks) than brown, blue or black, skirt pleats were specified in centimeters,... I only managed to go until 1st year of high school (snobbery + nine hrs of Latin per week=mental breakdown) so going to anotehr one with a more lenient dress code was like entering heaven. That said, I didn't really mind uniforms, not even the strict one, even if I was once reprimanded for wearing Burlingtons ("That contains yellow!") and wearing trousers first day of spring (roffle!).

Oh in posh school we also wore a tie DUH.

Yes, this is U&K. I think the only reason I know how to tie a tie is because I went to a school with a uniform.

Oh, we had it easy (for once): we could wear a tie with an elastic. haha

In hindsight I'm glad I had to wear a uniform at school. So much potential embarassment saved.

That said, the idea that a uniform is democratic and will avoid ridicule (if you don't have the right label clothes) is ridiculous. I still remember a girl mocking my friend for wearing a cheap hat. :-( It was obvious she was laughing at her. I really wanted to tell her off. "So my friend's mom is a cleaning lady, sfw, if she can't afford a swanky villa like your lawyer daddy."

Our ties (and scarves) denoted which house you were in.

xpost on the tie thing; having to tie one almost every weekday morning for five years means that even now, over 20 years later, I can probably tie a simple knot in my sleep.

I suspect that having to wear uniform to High School put me off the idea of formal clothing of any sort for the next decade.

What it also did is give me something of a bizarre kink about women wearin tartan skirts...

Our uniform: standard black blazer and trousers with gold and black striped tie and school crest on blazer saying VIRTUTE CRESCAM.

If you got to be a prefect you had gold piping embroidered on your blazer a la The Prisoner but I didn't stay until sixth year.

In early 1977 at morning assembly our Rector sternly told us that "ornamental punk rock wear" was banned.

There was also something of a kerfuffle in my second year about girls being allowed to wear trousers, including a picket at the school gates. The authorities relented not.

Our school got in the papers once after the headmaster banned Comic Relief red noses and some kid called the press.

We also had girls in trousers protests, the school eventually caved on that one.

It's a good lesson to learn how to bend the rules, the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.

A senior teacher called my friends and I fascists because we wore black shirts. We pointed out that the rules didn't specify a shirt colour and that he was the one attempting to impose rules on uniformity and deny us our individuality. I'm glad the belt was banned by then...

There was no protest at my school, the girls just came in in trousers.

One of the boys wore a school kilt for the day - and he got an out of uniform detention!

always had to wear uniforms. I hated it. to this day I hate the idea of uniforms or enforced formal wear. don't feel myself in those kind of clothes.

i woulda looked so gross in a classic school uniform so dud at the time, now i have grown distanced from the kids and dont care

deny us our individuality

roffle. i always found it ridiculous when i heard my friend proclaim they couldn't take it anymore (and later on switched to another school). it's just a frigging uniform. if you hate that....

My husband went to a private Catholic high school and they had a dress code, but not uniforms. One of the specifications of the dress code was that boys had to be cleanshaven. One of my husband's classmates wanted to grow a beard, so he protested this rule by papering the school with images of Jesus for 2 months. (He did not win.)

If Mary'd had a beard he'd have won.

always had to wear uniforms. I hated it. to this day I hate the idea of uniforms or enforced formal wear. don't feel myself in those kind of clothes.

whenever i wear formal clothes now it's hardly ever enforced as it was in school but all the same still "enforced" (socially i guess) - it's just a question of wearing what's appropriate for the situation, which i think is worth doing. i feel just as much myself in a suit for a business meeting or, eg now, lounging around the house in tracksuit bottoms, though, that's not a problem really...different selves, though.

school uniforms are never pleasant (though i got away fairly well, standard issue navy blue and grey) but there really is nothing wrong with them at all. we did use to regularly point & laugh at the brown-and-yellow uniforms of the local catholic school though.

i agree with lex. clothes don't make the man etc.

like Matt i am quite glad with hindsight that we weren't allowed to wear MUFTI to school.

When I was a student I wrote an award winning essay speaking against dress codes and uniforms. Later, as a teacher, I was begging for uniforms. Def. a C.

Mufti days were so great.

i'm not really talking about actual uniforms although i do think those are classic. (i am consistently impressed by schoolkids i see in england and scotland who are wearing them; they look sharp and cool although i'm sure they don't think so.)

i'm wondering more about in a school with no uniform, whether it's classic or dud to have a dress code, rather than just leave it up to the discretion of the teacher. i'm going with classic, because at least if you have rules that everyone knows then you can't have some teacher telling a kid to change his, i dunno, cassidy t-shirt just because the teacher doesn't like rap. on the other hand you can get these kind of very targeted bans, like on saggy pants, which hits certain kids more than others.

I don't understand the can't-touch-floor thing at all considering that one of the main things kids do is GROW, and anyone with more than three brain cells who has to dress jr highers will be buying things on the large side. What's the difference whether you cuff the pants or not? Or is that a security measure so that you can't hide things in them? Still doesn't quite add up.

Our ties (and scarves) denoted which house you were in.

Ours did too, but only once you'd won your house colours, usually by participating with honour in some sport or other, though I got mine for leading the all-conquering Layton House quiz team for three years :)

The nearest I got to uniform rebellion was wearing my 10-hole docs with my uniform, and wearing indie t-shirts underneath the regulation white shirt which was thin enough to show all the detail. Oh, and I had long hair. Sigh.

xxpost

Teachers have to much to do without asking them to monitor dress. That's an administrative responsibility.

I think most dress codes are truly built around issues of safety and classroom order (pants, flip flops, spaghetti straps) and they seem pretty standard across the country.

flip flops = kids will throw em?

Trip over them when running.

Mufti days were so great

yes! they were called gaudy days at my school.

school uniform wasn't too bad. navy jumper, dark grey trousers, plain navy blue tie, grey shirt in lower school (was that 1st and 2nd yr or yrs 1-3? can't remember), white shirt thereafter.

only restriction for 6th form....no jeans or trainers!

I wonder at what stage girls were allowed to wear trousers? Not while I was there but the change must have occurred since. are there any state schools in the uk where girls still have to wear skirts?

flip-flops get caught on stairs, easier for people to step on the back of them, easier to slip out of them, toes get stomped on, etc etc.

and also risk of cutting foot on broken glass re also why they aren't allowed in many nightclubs.

my mum was annoyed tho, coz the guidelines before I started school said that blazers were part of the uniform, so my mum went and bought me a blazer and when we actually got to the school nobody wore blazers except the first yrs and it was like having a BIG SIGN saying "pls pick on me" so blazer was consigned to back of wardrobe and 1 x v annoyed mother.

Oh yes, another thing - at my school, you wore anything green on pain of death.

I don't understand the can't-touch-floor thing at all considering that one of the main things kids do is GROW

I think it's to stop kids walking around trampling on about a foot of extra jeans leg. I suppose one could make a health and safety argument against trousers that can trip you up.

Yes I think a lot of these codes have to cut a wide swath to avoid looking like their singling certain kids out. The pants thing comes from the hip-hop style pants which are ridiculously huge and baggy. The kids belt them below their rear ends leaving yards of denim pooling on the ground. They can hardly walk and it's easy for other kids to step/trip on them.

At my boys Catholic high school consisted of slacks, a shirt (long- or short-sleeved), shoes, and a tie of our choice. Among the laudable things I owe my abandoned Catholicism is the importance of sartorial splendor.

also prefects had to wear gowns on formal occasions. there were three ranks of prefect - house, school and senior in increasing seniority, wearing light grey, royal blue and navy blue gowns respectively.

haha sometimes i forget that half the posters here actually live in 1837

Arcane junior high dress codes: no green on Thursday, or it means you are HORNY - the last thing a 7th grader wants to be seen to be.

Real dress codes did not have the C21 flavas of NO gang colours, doo-rags or slutwear; all there was to argue over was sweary things on t-shirts.

i agree with lex. clothes don't make the man etc.

I would gather, from the way you dressed. wink wink

all school kids should be made to wear shorts, even in big school.

there. I've said it.

there's a thread on ilm you may be interested in

anyway i maybe could've gotten with school uniforms if they were on some fun hogwarts shit, the choice between pain in the ass jumpers or unflattering pleated front french toast khakis was what i lived in fear of

"uniforms" in American public schools these days seems to be just solid color pants and polos in a choice of 2-3 colors. Not fantastically uniform but a start.

my high school had a ban on hats but i started wearing a bandana almost every day and not only eventually won the teachers' grudging acceptance of it, but started a kind of mini-trend! eventually there were some jocks who started wearing bandanas too, mainly for gym practice, and it became widespread enough that eventually the hammer came down and we were ALL told we had to stop :(

School uniform should never make the students look like gym teachers or 7-11 employees. That polo/slacks combo doesn't do anything else.

It's better than nothing, I think. It's cheap and easy for poor parents to buy and gives some feeling of uniformity/business-attitude to the student body

I don't remember having any dress codes -- boys weren't allowed to wear hats in the building, altho in a charming historical nod to inequality, girls technically were (and of course I occasionally did), and I'm sure you would have been asked to change out of Tshirts with swears or extremely graphic images (like metal band concert Ts, I guess). Otherwise, miniskirts, stretch-leggings, various sandals, etc were fair game. It was before the midriff-baring craze, though.

I was once made to change out of a Madonna Virgin Tour t-shit, because of the word "virgin". *sigh*

i started wearing a bandana almost every day and not only eventually won the teachers' grudging acceptance of it, but started a kind of mini-trend!

Lollington! Ron Howard should make a movie about you :)

school uniform is beyond classic and probably should be put into federal law or something.

thanks - i was particularly interested in what you and sam had to say!

i'll put my thoughts together on it later, but basically it's win-win for everybody.

the main thing to keep in mind is

1) it's one of a group of reforms that are highly correlated with success in turning around failing urban schools (doesn't imply causation yadda yadda)

2) it's generally a feature of very very high performing private schools (again, doesn't imply causation, just sayin)

3) there's been very little in the way of controversy / complaint in places where they've implemented it - parents and students are generally cool with it (parents are appreciative).

OK let me nail that down a little more precisely.

i think that in a high performing suburban school (like the one that i went to as a teenager, where people were already dressing in a "college uniform" as early as 9th grade - polo shirts, dress shirts, khaki pants or jeans, sweatshirts, long shorts, etc - basically abercrombie / gap casual wear) the benefits are truly marginal.

no, you don't want girls running around in tiny shorts and strapless tops (if it wouldn't fly at the workplace, don't wear it to school) but the kids and parents are more or less self-policing and there's not much to gain.

OTOH, you have public urban and inner-city schools.

in these environments, you have major disenfranchisement - kids don't think seriously about school as anything other than a requirement or a prison that they're forced through. they have a non-academic outlook outside of school, they're not thinking of education as a means of advancement, they have a set of priorities and goals and problems in which school is not even part of the equation - it's just a place they make you go sit for six hours a day during the week.

what you have to do in these environments is create a sense of being part of a system, create some sort of feeling of community and fight the reality of the environment outside the school, so that kids leave whatever is going on outside at the door and adopt a different attitude once they're inside the school.

this can be a pretty uphill fight - especially when the reality of the situation and environment is that no matter how hard many of these kids work in school, their environment and circumstance up to high school are going to basically push them into working-class careers - so every little bit of leverage a school can get counts.

to be even more clear about it

on the other hand you can get these kind of very targeted bans, like on saggy pants, which hits certain kids more than others.

-- Tracer Hand, Monday, May 21, 2007 1:56 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

this is EXACTLY the point.

we don't call these kids "at risk" because we need coded r@cist words...

See I don't see the saggy pants thing as targeting certain kids but maybe that's b/c I only went to/taught at urban schools. I don't know what kids at rich, non-minority schools dress like. At the schools I'm used to they all wear those baggy jeans and they're all unsafe, distracting. I mean I've seriously seen kids fall b/c their pants are belted around their knees. Also, kids don't need to be showing their drawers in school.

moonship 8080X10 re: putting kids in a certain mindset about school. "Uniforms" are only a small step, plenty of other things have to be committed to by the school's administration, but they are a good start.

1. pants must not sag below the waist and must not touch the floor

Those be some saggy pants!

-- Mark G, Monday, May 21, 2007 11:00 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Link

welcome to my high school circa 2003

to be even more clear about it

on the other hand you can get these kind of very targeted bans, like on saggy pants, which hits certain kids more than others.

-- Tracer Hand, Monday, May 21, 2007 1:56 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

this is EXACTLY the point.

we don't call these kids "at risk" because we need coded r@cist words...

-- moonship journey to baja, Monday, May 21, 2007 3:34 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Slipknot fans are not a "race"!!!

have you been to iowa

(obv that doesn't really apply in inner-city schools but saggy pants were a huge thing in pretty much every demographic in the earlier half of this decade)

xpost

agreed 100% with vahid. uniforms at school are pretty essential, unless you go to some montessori type shit for the lame

My county's dress code expressly prohibits bedroom slippers.

hey i went to montessori school for a week once

oh

haha mine too, and pajama pants.

xpost

Uniform sported more than once by a parent during parent-teacher conference: wife-beater, no bra; sweats or shorts; bedroom slippers. Class.

hahaha what, and hair curlers too? that is classic.

Back then, I hated uniforms but in hindsight, it was probably all for the best. I always tried to be all rebellious anyway - hemming my skirt a couple of inches too short, dyeing my hair (which wasn't allowed), wearing knee high socks (which wasn't allowed either).

Also, Curtis otm about super-baggy uniform pants, practically every boy at my school wore too-loose pants and this was in 1999 or so.

make up wasn't allowed at my school - is that quite a common thing?

do you mean not allowed to wear makeup to school? no, i've never heard of that. makeup in the classroom, as in applying cosmetics during class = totally verboten, obviously. until college, anyway. >:(

if uniforms have so much going for them and so few disparagers in the places they've been introduced, why hasn't the US gone for it?

Nope, my school didn't allow makeup either - but the teachers were pretty alright with powders or lipglosses. Nothing more than that though - eyeliner, heavy lipstick, or even nail polish were pretty much out of the question.

xpost

xpost

take a pick:

1. money - parents mistakenly think this will cost them too much
2. freedom of expression - Americans are big on that and many kids feel it is their god-given right to dress however they want when they want
3. I think I had another point but I forgot. . .

i think uniforms are a completely sound idea but i know at the time i would have flipped out if i had to wear one.

teenagers expressing themselves? yeah, great idea

i think another part of it is that we're reacting to a new phenomenon.

if my kids today dressed like "low class" kids from 30 years ago, i would be thrilled. no baggy pants, no t-shirts with huge al / pacino scarface graphics, or "GET THAT MONEY" emblazoned over a pile of beepers and pagers, no gang colors, etc.

i think misery's point #3 might have been FROM OUR END IT'S A BITCH TO ENFORCE

how common are school uniforms in america? i just realised, i have no idea

xxpost

school's are running into the same problems with re: hair color, piercings, etc.

Moonship, who were you in old ILx?

It is interesting that school uniforms are by definition preppy type formal wear. It'd be cool if the uniforms were actually gray jumpsuits instead of polo shirts + khakis. All the kids would look like they worked on a moon colony or something.

even as a collage making tween i would have had to accept adidas jumpsuits in our school colors

Those would pretty fuckin' awesome.

i was "v4hid"

school uniforms at their best = missy's "gossip folks" video

actually those WERE my high school colors in that video, red burgundy + gold. my current HS is purple + white, which is sorta lame for anything except a hoodie.

http://www.mnhs.org/historymatters/web_assets/purple_rain.jpg

i only had to wear a uniform from first to third grade (catholic school, yay!), and while that seriously stunted my ability to dress myself in middle school afterwards (total dork), overall i'm with v4hid: uniforms are classic, and make school Serious Business.

accusations of enforced conformity are groundless, i think, as long as the educational environment isn't stifling.

I wished constantly my junior high/high school had uniforms. Poor-ass family, got roundly mocked for wearing mom's & dad's t-shirts and sweaters, 15-year-old hande-me-downs from older cousins, and stretch pants my mom sewed me. I bought my own clothes after I got a job at 16 but it was still balls. I don't think I ever felt more peaceful than at graduation when everyone was wearing the same gear: it felt so peaceful and egalitarian.

Most all the school dress code was aimed at girls: shorts/skirts 4" above knee maximum, no tank tops especially. Me and other girls would push up the sleeves of our t-shirts and say "I'm being seductive!" hilarious.

"Uniforms" are only a small step, plenty of other things have to be committed to by the school's administration, but they are a good start.

Mis Miz OTM

Oh yeah, and every time someone wore a t-shirt w/weed, beer, or some kind of message the faculty disagreed with, it was 'turn shirt inside out time.' I had to turn my DaVinci's 'proportions of man' t-shirt inside out all the time until I started putting little badges over his privates.