Many countries, including the UK and Australia, consider public school uniforms essential for teaching children to follow the rules and develop a sense of belonging. However, public schools in other countries such as the USA and Canada rarely enforce uniform requirements. School uniforms are more common in private schools, regardless of where they are located.
Pros Of School Uniforms
Cost-Effective
School uniforms are often very basic, such as “white polo shirts and grey shorts”, so parents are not required to spend a lot of money on them. Many low-cost clothing stores produce and distribute these typical uniform-conforming clothes at low costs during back-to-school sales.
Reduces visible poverty
All children dressed in the same way prevent the poorer children whose parents cannot afford brand-name clothing from being singled out as much. They will wear the same clothes as the wealthier children.
As a result, chances of bullying caused by the wealth of a child’s family can be reduced. Additionally, it allows poor children to feel like they are the same as everyone else. In addition to leveling the playing field, it gives children a sense of security that they are just another student – not better or worse than other students of higher or lower wealth.
Cons Of School Uniforms
Insufficient freedom of expression
Dress codes impede creative expression, according to this argument. A uniform seems inappropriate to develop innovative, critical, and free-thinking individuals. When the word ‘uniform’ implies ‘identical’, people become uniform due to their uniforms. Do we want schools to make us identical? Couldn’t that be the current educational crisis?
Visible diversity can be beneficial
Uniforms are advocated by those who claim they prevent bullying. They prevent children from making fun of each other based on what they wear.
Isn’t school the perfect place to start discussing our diversity and how it’s a good thing to live in a multicultural society?
By uniformizing children, we conceal their diversity (“sweeping under the rug”). We are preventing conversations about it and celebrating it.
Therefore, the uniform is arguably outdated in an era when diversity should be something visible, celebrated, and discussed, especially in schools.
Aspects of gender expression
Nowadays, we’re learning that enforcing gender norms in schools might violate children’s gender expression. For example, some girls don’t like wearing dresses. This isn’t always a gender issue. Some girls don’t want to wear dresses!
A child’s uniform could violate an individual’s gender expression. Even though their values may be outdated in today’s world, conservative older people are telling young people what to wear!
Many private schools in Australia forced girls to wear dresses, causing a very big problem. As a result, the state government intervened, with a government commissioner saying the schools were set in a different era.