Uniformity through Uniforms: One parent’s experience with school uniforms
informing him that Rebecca had our permission to “opt out.”
This of course provoked a phone call from the principal who wanted to know why and by what right we were opting out. When we informed him that as to right it was guaranteed by law he tried to argue that, even though all of the literature referred to the new policy as a school uniform policy it was in fact just a more restrictive dress code and thus not covered by the law. After we rejected that argument out of hand the principal tried to argue the rationale for the policy. Now I was all in favor of a reasoned discussion about the policy and at one point during the year had my daughter write up her case for not wearing uniforms and suggested to her and the principal that they get together and discuss her reasons. That meeting turned out to be a disaster, as the principal couldn’t actually bring himself to try and understand the view of a thirteen year old.
Finally, whatever the reason, the statistical evidence from Long Beach showed that uniforms work so a theory of causality was unnecessary.
Before I start countering these arguments let me say that I’ve never felt very passionate about the school uniform issue itself. My main interest is in understanding what policies like the school uniform policy say about the values and objectives of their creators and the reasons behind the uncritical acceptance of these policies by the public at large. My concern is not with this particular policy which I view as mostly benign, if silly, but that the point of view it represents and the inability of many to see the potential problems with this point of view will and in fact has lead to the creation of policies which are genuinely harmful to students and therefore to the future of our society.
Let’s start with the notion that uniforms foster unity. My interpretation of unity is a belief among those that are unified in a common set of goals and a particular set of actions for achieving those goals. Now unity in itself is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes, as in the creation of the American democracy it is clearly good, and other times as in the unity to subjugate and annihilate other cultures and races it is clearly a bad thing. After all, the members of a lynch mob are united in their goal. So what kind of unity will requiring students to wear uniforms foster? One kind of unity I could imagine arising is the unity of the oppressed. One could imagine students saying, “No matter our ethnic, cultural, social or class differences we can agree that we hate being made to wear these uniforms and we hate those who make us wear them!” That would certainly represent a unity of values that might lead to a unity of actions but that probably isn’t the kind of unity the author’s of this policy intended to foster.
So let’s work backwards and imagine what form of unity the authors wanted to achieve. One assumes that since the authors are educators the unity they desire in the students is a common belief in the value of education and a commitment to becoming educated by working hard in their classes. I have no argument with such a goal but by what logic or even superstition do you connect being required to wear a uniform to a belief in the value of education? No matter how I approach the question I am unable to see how uniforms could promote any positive form of unity at all.
I conclude that what’s actually meant by the slogan is not that uniforms promote unity but rather a lack of uniforms promotes disunity. The theory would be that differences in attire emphasize our ethnic, cultural, social, and class differences and therefore make it hard for students to be unified. But again, by what logic or superstition does one connect the existence or non-existence of differences, superficial or otherwise, with others with my belief in the value of education and commitment to working hard in my classes? Worse, what message are we sending students by implying that there is some connection? Are we telling them that people with differences can’t all become educated?
Let’s move on to the value of eliminating superficial distinctions. What value could this have? Perhaps we are trying to convince students that clothes do not make the man by placing the students in an environment where everyone is clothed the same. We can view this as a kind of experiment that will allow the students to observe first hand that clothes don’t matter. But what is the connection between an experiment in which all students dress the same and the hypothesis that clothes don’t matter? All the experiment could possibly demonstrate is the tautology that clothes don’t matter in an environment in which clothes are constrained to be constant. It seems to me that if we want to get the clothes don’t matter message