Moonlit_Angel said:
I just find it really strange that the exact same generation that asked to be able to allow guys to wear their hair long or girls to wear pants or whatever else is now sitting here supporting school uniforms.
That would mean people born in the late 1940s/early 1950s though, and there's not too many around here.
dazzlingamy said:
i think you're hearing conformity and you're having vietnam, fight the man flashbacks.
That's probably overstating things a bit, but I was surprised by the intensity of resistance to the idea too. None of the schools I went to had uniforms and I never wished for them; on the other hand, I can't imagine I would've had a problem with them. I'm not inclined to buy the idea that they'd function as fantastic social levellers and abolish cliqueishness and hierarchy heartaches, but I'm not inclined to buy the idea that they'd cruelly stifle self-expression and leave artsy or politically restive kids psychically scarred, either. The strongest argument in favor of them, I think, is the one several have already mentioned, i.e. the economic argument.
MrsSpringsteen said:
Yes uniforms might help in school as a short term solution to this bullying, but what about the larger question of the values these kids are learning? Are uniforms going to stop them from worshiping designer names and just things in general and somehow connecting that to their self esteem and self worth? Because there are adults who have the same values. Did they grow up with those values or did they acquire them when they became adults?
Trying to think in terms of precedents here...I'm not sure what age you are, but I can recall, from when I was roughly the age of the kids in the article, several instances of fashion trends that seemed similarly all-encompassing. For example, for both girls and boys, there was Izod shirts with the collar pulled up, and for girls only, legwarmers. Now very few kids where I went to school could afford either of those, and you probably had to shop in Memphis or Jackson to find them, but for those who could afford them, well they wore Izod shirts and color-coordinated legwarmers
every day. High school seemed a little more diversified fashionwise, but there was clearly only a pretty small range of styles that were 'in' at any given time, and those who could afford it wouldn't have been caught dead in anything but. (In general their parents tended to be notably 'well-heeled' types too, if not to quite that degree--adults aren't usually quite as anxious about visually 'making the grade' as kids, especially girls, are, and are less likely to fixate on one 'must-have' way to get there.) I never personally felt bad that I wasn't one of those kids (though I would've liked to have had more and nicer clothes than I did), but I don't really have any reason to think they were somehow irreversibly morally or psychologically compromised by passing through that stage--only that their parents spent more money on clothes than was necessary for them to look suitably prepared for the occasion. I suppose you could call that a 'values' issue, but it's not really my place to tell other parents how to budget for their kids' clothing needs and wants.
As far as the peer pressure and bullying issues involved, I have to admit I'm pretty cynical about that--I just don't think you're ever going to be able to prevent jockeying for social status and all the crap that comes with it among teenagers. No one's kids are going to be immune to that. The best you can do is provide a solid foundation in showing them the most important social priorities in life (community, courtesy, considerateness, reaching out to those in need, refraining from gossip, respecting all the different forms human potential comes in, finding what your own knacks for helping others are and cultivating those etc.), keep up with their changing ideas and experiences of those in a way that reflects the same, and keep hoping for the best. They're going to have their blind spots and their bad experiences, as we all did and do--it's a work in progress.