Should School Uniforms Be Mandated In Elementary Schools

Studies have been done on how school uniforms create a better and safe environment for students and teachers. However there is contradictory about this issue because of the lack of information and other changes that might have happened at the same time as the uniform policy was being integrated. This may be difficult to single out one change that was added to the school system. Schools are believed to take away opportunities for the students to realize diversity and socioeconomic gap between students as stated by (Fossey and DeMitchell). Authors with both sides of the argument for and against school uniforms who were key components to the forming of this article are Keith A King in “Should School Uniforms be Mandated In Elementary Schools?”,

One thing that was practiced in the school was religion was practiced in the school. The trend of school uniforms moved to the United States in the 1800’s when Native Americans began attending boarding schools and dressed in military style uniform. Most of the schools who enforced the uniform policy were private or parochial schools. Maryland was one of the states that was mostly recognized because the prior school year a confrontation over a pair of $95 glasses which lead to a shooting that wounded a student from a public school. In the fall of 1988, 39 public elementary and 2 junior high schools in Washington D.C., had required students to wear school uniforms and soon spread to other states where mainly students were from low income households and large minority population

As families begin to send their students to schools with uniforms sometimes the family does not have the money to pay for uniforms. American students spend near $1 billion dollars per year on school uniforms (ProCon). A set of three uniforms per year comes to around one hundred dollars, the ability for some families to pay for new uniforms every year is something that families struggle with. The usage of school uniforms does not allow students to see the diversity/ cultural differences in schools. Students are unable to see that there are different people then them and believe that their peers come from a similar background as they did. In the beginning of history is where this may have been true but now since uniforms have spread into metro inner city schools this becomes an issue (Fossey and DeMitchell). Another issue that hold back students are the delay of transition to adulthood because the students are used to being told what they could wear and what they could not