School Uniforms Controversy

In my experience of the last 12 years of public education, I know that individuality is an important part of the adolescent development process. Growing up in this type of school environment, I learned a lot about how people operate in terms of materialism and egocentrism. There is a lot of controversy over public schools having uniforms, but overall adopting school uniforms has been shown to improve behavior and academic achievement, and decrease judgement across the board.

There have been proven benefits to installing school uniforms in schools. Long Beach, California, was nationally recognized four years ago because they were the first public school district to make school uniforms mandatory. It is stated that after a year, “dramatic decreases

Teachers are human. They judge students on their race, gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexual preference, and there have been several instances of discrimination due to these judgements. Stephen Sawchuck writes about three lawsuits that took place in 2009 and 2010, with policies “that violate students’ civil rights by denying them access to good teachers.” Black students have a history of being discriminated against, but as soon as students are in a setting where they are all equal, provided by uniforms, the teachers no longer have a basis to judge them off

I agree that it is important for students to be able to express themselves, but school is not always the perfect place to do that. In keith Budge’s article he writes about how a school in the United Kingdom called Besdales, “does not require its students to wear uniforms in order to stress the importance of individuality among students and to inculcate them their duty to the wider community”Students can express themselves outside of school however they want, but school should be viewed as an environment for learning. Installing uniforms can help to remove materialism that students acquire by seeing other kids with designer labels. Although uniforms cannot eliminate this entirely, it sends a message of equality that should be recognized at school. Long Beach has had two successfully countered court cases. One included a group of parents who were lawyers that “sought a temporary restraining order arguing that no public school system could implement a mandatory uniform policy.” The second case was about how it will be difficult for poor families to afford uniforms, which was solved easily by the agreement that “we provide six full sets of uniforms free to every youngster who qualifies for free or reduced price lunch”. Any major decision by a school board will have its critics, but overall school uniforms are