Uniforms in school, psychological impact of

[Reverse Transcriptase]

I suppose this thread could go into "school, work, life" but I love the psychological forum so much... and I justified with my creative title.

Anyway, what do you guys think about having uniforms in school?

I went to a catholic elementary school from K-3rd where we had uniforms. They were not really strict- but somewhat. You had to wear a polo shirt and pants or shorts, with only the colors red/blue/white. So we usually always had navy pants with either a red or white shirt. We'd also have sweaters with the Saint Claire dragon on it. (Trying to find a picture... I really liked the logo.)

The girls could wear red/blue/white skirts with polo shirts or one of the few dresses.

Most of the clothing came from one store, so my dad was just a little annoyed at the monopoly they had, but there wasn't much price racketeering.

One of the interesting things about uniforms is that then you can have "free dress" days as a way to make a holiday at the school. Something public schools take for granted can make a lot of kids kind of excited. For example, Saint Patrick's day is a free dress day. (I remember doing this- and we'd pinch anyone who didn't wear green.)

However, I remember being a little unsure about what to wear on free dress days, since a lot of them would be excited about it and talk about their clothes. Additionally when I transferred to public school in fourth grade I really didn't know what I should wear. There's some strong parallels to the "Privacy Issues and Paranoia" thread, talking about clothing. It's actually what brought this thread to mind.

I enjoyed having uniforms. It just made it so I didn't have to worry or think about clothes as much.

 

[Seducer of the Homeless]

in my opinion it is just another form of brainwash. all dressing the same may result in irradicating discrimination of clothing styles and fashions, less easy to identify social classes. but it also helps children to develop more similarities ('if we dress the same why not act the same way or think the same way') for children at such a premature age to be told they are no different to anyone else it is inevitable they will continue to have this viewpoint, which is why by a certain age they all act the same because that is how they believe they should behave.
(it is also the schooling system is so basic and philistine. "why should we allow dissidents and intellectuals free thought. could you imagine the horror
individuality, what a ridiculous concept". it is also why talented and intelligent pupils are forced to rebelious behavior or sadness)

Is this not Brainwash?!

 

[Thaklaar]

The tendency towards intellectual homogeneity (teach the test!) and failure to teach anything resembling critical thinking is, to my mind, far more dangerous to the minds of our youth than mandated shirt-slack combos.

 

[Seducer of the Homeless]

yes, but one thing leads to another. Uniforming is just one element of this 'Brainwash'. underappreciation of the 'Gifted' (sorry if it sounds like i consider my self some kind of genius, i don't. i consider myself not clever but others stupid. there is a diference)
i agree, the schooling i believe is to 'Teach the Test'. something in which my peers revel in and i despise (thus lose all motivation and don't listen to anything the teacher teaches as they are only catering for the dumb, we are but a number on a sheet of statistics, Inter-School bragging rights). now however glamourous the test result untimately nothing has been learned. i prove this point by my Geography class. i got a lower mark than many idiots in the class. these idiots thought Asia was a country and didn't know what Vegetation was. yet they beat me on the test. in maths my 'Friend' (occassional punchbag to exercise practical jokes) got Full Marks on his Maths exam without knowing what A Horizontal was. these just goes to prove that any tests that are done ar just recital of neccessary knowledge (artificial intelligence, if you will)

 

[Jordan~]

I don't really care about the uniform. You can take it off when you get home. It's the hair rules that bother me.

 

[Seducer of the Homeless]

Hair Rules?!

what like a Mohawk or a Beard?

then again the teachers sent home pupils for having red streaks in their hair on Comic Relief.
this is morally wrong

 

[Kidege]

I hated it. Had to wear skirts for what seemed forever. When you want to run up the stairs and can't because you're minding your steps, annoyance sets in quickly. Having to mind the way you run, jump and sit all the time counts as brainwashing. If schools are going to make uniforms compulsory they should at least make skirts optional.


I've heard of a couple of pros:

a) It's practical. And it's true, you don't have to think what to wear.

b) It diminishes fights for status and saves the poorer kids some embarrassment. The latter may be true, but I'm not so sure it can stop good old fights for status. There's always accesorizing, and bullying, and...


Edit: hair rules suck! In some public schools here teachers bring out the scissors when they don't like a student's hair lenght.

They did it to me in a private school, when my nails were considered too long.

 

[Seducer of the Homeless]

Skirts! oh sorry, i misjudged your gender.....oops.....

 

[Jordan~]

Hair rules. We're not allowed to wear our hair below collar length, a rule I consistently ignore.

 

[Seducer of the Homeless]

our school is big on jewellery and coats purchased from anywhere but school (more uniform, more greed from the school)
and Phones and iPods are banned (but we can listen to 'class' music. more brainwash. "what is that you are listening to! DISSECTION! how vulgar, you must listen to Ladette Ga Ga. thats what everyone else listens to. CONFORM!)

schools are so very Nazi....

 

[Sugarpop]

yes, but one thing leads to another. Uniforming is just one element of this 'Brainwash'.

How do you know that wearing uniforms is a thing that leads to the thing called intellectual homogenity?
Uniforms are often associated with homogenity, but do you have any kind of evidence to back the claim that dressing alike leads to thinking alike?
Do schools with compulsory uniforms follow a 'brainwashing'-policy in other areas?

As I'm not particularly preoccupied with clothing, and find dressing up a boring chore, I'd probably enjoy having to wear a simple attire every day. I do, however, resent unnecessary limits to personal freedom, so I might vote against uniforms.

 

[Jordan~]

Don't mention her, please... My nerves can't handle it.
That sounds dreadful. Our teachers at least generally encourage non-conformism.

 

[Thaklaar]

yes, but one thing leads to another. Uniforming is just one element of this 'Brainwash'. underappreciation of the 'Gifted' (sorry if it sounds like i consider my self some kind of genius, i don't. i consider myself not clever but others stupid. there is a diference)
i agree, the schooling i believe is to 'Teach the Test'. something in which my peers revel in and i despise (thus lose all motivation and don't listen to anything the teacher teaches as they are only catering for the dumb, we are but a number on a sheet of statistics, Inter-School bragging rights). now however glamourous the test result untimately nothing has been learned. i prove this point by my Geography class. i got a lower mark than many idiots in the class. these idiots thought Asia was a country and didn't know what Vegetation was. yet they beat me on the test. in maths my 'Friend' (occassional punchbag to exercise practical jokes) got Full Marks on his Maths exam without knowing what A Horizontal was. these just goes to prove that any tests that are done ar just recital of neccessary knowledge (artificial intelligence, if you will)

It wasn't quite that bad when I was coming up (back in that prehistoric era I like to call "the early 90's"). I actually had a couple of teachers who taught me stuff. Still say what you wear at school is orders of magnitude less important than the pap they're spoon feeding you.

 

[Seducer of the Homeless]

@Sugarpop -

i knew you would post like this.....

Neither causes or results in another, but each 'element' contributes. personal freedom in any way is what school should be like. the evidence is in the undeniable similarities between the majority of Student.

it is not about Fashion-Consciousness. if you don't care about clothes you shouldn't need to worry about what you wear. and if it does bother you, you are benefited. Win-Win.

some people (Sugarpop) just like to be awkward....

 

[Ermine]

Uniforms are a form of groupthink to me, and I resent it as such. Also, as I've mentioned on occasion, I love to express myself through my clothing, and uniforms would restrict this form of expression.

 

[Chimera]

Uniforms are a form of groupthink to me, and I resent it as such. Also, as I've mentioned on occasion, I love to express myself through my clothing, and uniforms would restrict this form of expression.

Agreed.
Sometimes I think that uniforms would be fine, because it would be one less thing to worry about when getting dressed in the morning...
But I dislike any policy that forbids me from wearing my dog collar.

Also, someone mentioned something about music in the classroom...at my school we're not allowed to listen to anything in class, but we can use our ipods/mp3players in the morning and at lunch. What are the policies about that at other schools?
​

 

[Ermine]

At my school I can get away with it as long as the teacher isn't lecturing.

 

[Seducer of the Homeless]

at ours we are Completely forbidden music players.

this is only a recent rule so i am not sure if we were behind or we are one of the first.

 

[Kuu]

I went to a private catholic school for all my life, up until highschool when I managed to escape (my parents wanted me to continue there, but oh did I refuse). That makes it 13 years. With the same 100 or so people. And, um, now that we're all (most, at least) in college... I see absolutely no evidence that we were all brainwashed into conformity through uniforms and hair codes... all turned out the same, our individuality non-existent.... quite the contrary....

Considering all the authoritarian BS that goes on at schools, uniforms should be the LEAST of people's concerns... In fact, I never heard anyone ever complain about uniforms in 13 years... Well, I hated the sports uniform, but because of the thing itself was quite goofy and I didn't like sports... not because of the concept of wearing uniforms...

And we had no such things as "free dress days"...

It is true it diminishes the most direct class discrimination... but still, as others said, there will always be accessories. In fact, more now than back when I was there... with ipods and cheap cellphones....

And it was very practical indeed. I didn't think about clothes AT ALL until I got to highschool. I was oblivious to all those sorts of social games, expectations and manipulations attached to clothing... and I think that most people were much better before that.

An interesting case is that our generation split 50/50, half going to another highschool without dress codes, others staying in the private catholic school of doom... but the old friend networks remained pretty much the same. And there was just no difference in anything between the people. Of those that remained, there was just some minor complaining about uniforms, but never a "Ah damned nazis want to assimilate us into their grey goo!"


Seriously, what's with all the whining about it, I've always wondered. Is it an American thing? (I think it is, with all their individuality/freedom paranoia and their need to be unique... its an ESFJ nation after all...)


(a last thought: Is my current love of suits a direct product of my old uniform-wearing days? I know lots of people that claim they hate suits, that suits represent the man oppressing the individuality of the people, that they would rather die than wear a suit... and I'm like... man, it's just a suit...)

 

[Kidege]

Skirts! oh sorry, i misjudged your gender.....oops.....

You got the gender right.

(see the numerous threads on gender issues for clarification)

/end thread derailment

 

[echoplex]

I'm a fan of individuality, so naturally I've always been threatened by such an idea. However, I can see how it may make life simpler by removing the distraction of what to wear. The problem here is that most people would agree that school, for many kids, is where they develop their sense of self, so socially, I think uniforms can present an obstacle to development.

 

[Atriamax]

Id rather not go to school than go to a school where i am told what i have to wear. I hate when people tell me what to do. conforming os okay but only as long as its configured by the conformists. Not by the leader. uniforms = communism? lawl?

 

[Kidege]

I know it says uniforms. I keep reading unicorns.

 

[Kuu]

unicorns = communism? Who'd'a thunk it?

 

[Seducer of the Homeless]

i'm from UK, so I don't think it is and American thing.

i am not neccessarily an advocate of individuality, more of Free Thought, Free Speach.
telling people how to dress is just one part, there is the Brainwash of young children in Primary school. just drilling in beliefs that the school wants them believe and drill out thoughts of non-conformity and individuality. up until a certain age i was being brainwashed (i will forever obsess over germs for what they said to me at an early age). teacher taking chocolate and sweets from childrens packed lunches, this is just control. health days and insisting everyone should eat healthily.

basically, all these things add up to the main goal. People thinking how society wants them to.

 

[bdubs]

I had to wear either a uniform or follow a fairly strict dress code from K-12th grade. It is quite liberating being able to choose what the heck I want to wear in college. I can not say that I am resentful about the forced clothing rules, and I do not feel like I was being brainwashed because of my school uniform. Then again, in my mind cloths are more of a means to an end then a form of self expression.

I remember the out-of-uniform days. We were told that if we payed $1-$5 to some chairity we would be allowed to wear something outside the dresscode. Even this was monitored though. I remember one of the deans of my highschool carefully listing the pants that we could not wear. In the end I concluded they only wanted us to wear blue jeans on an out-of-uniform day. I rarely took part in these events because I felt it was incredibly stupid. The conecpt of paying money to wear my own cloths was absurd.

In gradeschool, students would be given passes on their birthday that allowed them a free out of uniform day. Ironically, I got in trouble in 3rd or 4th grade because of this. I chose a day that was set aside for a special all school mass to use my pass. Apparently this was frowned upon by the staff.

On a slightly different note, a latin teacher I knew received some flack because she sold shirts with the phrases "Quid sub toga portas?" and "Feminae mea servae sunt" on the back. These are translated as "What is under your toga?" and "Women are my slaves" respectively. It was not the school system that became angry at her fund raising idea, but parents who thought that the shirts were disrespectful who complained. These shirts were not part of the dress code obviously, the only time a student could wear them was when he was at home. They were in no way, shape, or form disruptive, but the shirts offended some of the wrong people.

 

[Thaklaar]

at ours we are Completely forbidden music players.

this is only a recent rule so i am not sure if we were behind or we are one of the first.

See, now, I don't get why music players would be presumed to be necessary. I also don't get texting. I is old person. But I can understand why teachers would consider them as distractions and nothing more. Us oldsters didn't come up with our personal soundtracks playing in our ears at all times.

 

[Reverse Transcriptase]

I also don't get texting.

It's good to have the freedom to communicate by text or talking, depending on how you're feeling or because of constraints ("no talking! Quiet!").

I am really skeptical about the brainwashing argument. I mean- think about the intense societal pressure in America to be extraverted, sensing and judging! Yet we all stubbornly turn out INTP, despite often not even finding other INTPs around us until late into high school! It's even more amazing for our INTP ladies, since they had to overcome the T/F male/female bias.

There might be some types that are suceptable to brainwashing. I don't know what they are, but I don't think INTPs are one of them.

(I also don't know if one can say that SJs are susceptible to brainwashing- is it still brainwashing if it's voluntary?)

 

[Thaklaar]

It's good to have the freedom to communicate by text or talking, depending on how you're feeling or because of constraints ("no talking! Quiet!").

I get that. I just don't get the need to be in constant communication with the entire world every waking moment. I remember when most people didn't have answering machines, even. If they didn't answer the phone, you just...called them back later and didn't worry about it. Different times. I wish I didn't need to have this damn cell phone in my pocket at all times, period. And note to all you damn kids: Get off my lawn!

I am really skeptical about the brainwashing argument. I mean- think about the intense societal pressure in America to be extraverted, sensing and judging! Yet we all stubbornly turn out INTP, despite often not even finding other INTPs around us until late into high school! It's even more amazing for our INTP ladies, since they had to overcome the T/F male/female bias.

There might be some types that are suceptable to brainwashing. I don't know what they are, but I don't think INTPs are one of them.

(I also don't know if one can say that SJs are susceptible to brainwashing- is it still brainwashing if it's voluntary?)

Got to agree with you. I know that I'm unbrainwashable, at least. If the Catholic church couldn't manage it...

 

[Seducer of the Homeless]

but most types are stupid enough....

 

[Thaklaar]

Eh, most people want a nice comfy pigeonhole to be stuffed into. We're the weirdos.

 

[bdubs]

Exactly, I do not think it is an issue of intellegence but of willingness to conform.

 

[Seducer of the Homeless]

maybe so, but it depends on your definition of Intelligence is.....

 

[Thaklaar]

Obviously, it's directly correlated to agreeing with me.

 

[Seducer of the Homeless]

 

[Thaklaar]

Aw, don't be sad, kiddo. I was just jokin' around. Always take anything I say with a grain of salt. Then some tequila. And a bite of lime. Yum.