Uniformity through Uniforms: One parent’s experience with school uniforms
doesn’t seem to be much difference between the policy of the gang and the policy of the school.
Choices that come to mind include chatting with friends, hair styling, putting on makeup and jewelry, downloading and listening to music, video games, the Internet, drugs and sex.
The theory that uniforms make students indistinguishable preventing teachers from discriminating against students was articulated by my daughter’s principal. I confess that this argument leaves me almost speechless. Is it really the case that discrimination by teachers against students is a wide spread problem? Are uniforms such an effective camouflage and/or are teachers so blind that even after a few weeks of seeing students almost every day they are unable to find ways of distinguishing them? Isn’t it sometimes useful for teachers to be able to distinguish one student from another? Should we extend the uniform policy to require students to wear masks and speak through speech distorters?
The final argument in support of uniforms given earlier is that empirical data from Long Beach shows they work. I have two basic concerns with this argument. My first concern is about the ethics of a pure trial and error approach to improving schools. This implies an approach in which we set up experiments without theoretical foundation and apply them to living human beings without their consent. Having decided that uniforms are good should we now start a series of experiments varying attire to see if we can do better? Perhaps we put all students in Bermuda shorts. What would be the effects of making students cross-dress? Should we try an all-nude school?
My second concern is scientific. In being the first to go out on a limb and require school uniforms Long Beach clearly had a vested interest in finding success in their statistics in the same way that the Cold Fusion folks wanted to find free neutrons in their experiments. This is a well-known phenomenon in science and accounted for by peer review and the requirement of repeatability by unbiased observers. Any kind of science is difficult and science based on analysis of statistical data is particularly prone to error. Are we confident in the Long Beach data?
Apparently not. A search on the Internet turned up The Effects of Student Uniforms on Attendance, Behavior Problems, Substance Use, and Academic Achievement by David L. Brunsma and Kerry A. Rockquemore from the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. (See http://www.cprlafayette.com/study.htm.) I ask forgiveness for my prejudice, but when I saw this link I assumed that a study of school uniforms done at a Catholic university would be biased in favor of uniforms. This was not at all the case.
The paper begins with the following, to my mind, strange declaration.
This is a true and high-level research study based on accepted scientific research methods. It has been done in a manner so as to minimize bias on the part of the researchers thereby providing an objective finding. We have not been able to find an opposing study to match this level of study. Many studies, including the infamous Long Beach (a school district WITHOUT UNIFORMS for high school and an OPT-OUT for all others) study, have been referenced concerning the benefits of school uniforms, however they are based more on conjecture than scientific research – we can find none which follow even the most rudimentary elements of a scientific research study. We are open to anyone who can find one and send it to us.
“A valid research design tests what it is supposed to test and is concerned with whether the concepts being investigated are actually the ones being measured or tested.” (Research Methods – A process of Inquiry 3rd Edition Graziano/Raulin)
I’ve never before seen a scientific study that felt compelled to state explicitly that it had used scientific methods rather than something else (superstition?). Apparently the field is so cluttered with garbage that the authors felt that this statement was necessary.
As to their conclusions, the abstract says:
Recent discourse on public school reform has focused on mandatory uniform policies. Proponents of such reform measures emphasize the benefits of student uniforms on specific behavioral and academic outcomes. This research empirically tests the claims made by uniform advocates using 10th grade data from The National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988. Our findings indicate that student uniforms have no direct effect on substance use, behavioral problems or attendance. A negative effect of uniforms on student academic achievement was found. These findings are contrary to current