Should School Uniforms Be Worn

It is the first day of your high school career. You have to pick out the perfect outfit to start off the new year. You want to impress everyone. What will you wear? Some students do not have this option. Their schools require uniforms to be worn. We are told to be our own person and to take the path less traveled, but how do students do that with uniforms? How can you be yourself? School uniforms have been a hot topic in the last few years. Schools everywhere are enforcing uniforms to eliminate things such as bullying, but are they causing more problems than they are solving? Overall, school uniforms can be both beneficial and detrimental to the students.
The number of public schools that require students to wear uniforms to school has increased 6% in an eight year time

span (Wilde & Wilde, 2016). They are becoming more popular and changing perspectives everywhere. The question is are students being benefitted by the uniforms, or are they a negative aspect of their school lives?
Bullying is the probably the number one reason schools require uniforms to be worn. Students are often bullied about the type of clothes they wear. If they are not in fashion, the child might be made fun of. “Imagine your son or daughter coming back from school crying because they are in fashion and everyone is teasing them for wearing unfashionable clothes. Oh, and your daughter or son would want new clothes to be in fashion, and clothes cost money!” (Debate.org, 2016). Uniforms are taking away a child’s rights to self-expresion. Uniforms get rid of some bullying that goes on. The downside to this is the fact that students are not able to express their individualism. They are just another student in the crowd. Most students chose their clothes because it is who they are and describes them just by wearing it. With uniforms in place of their own clothes, they are limited to what they can do to be themselves.
Dress codes are hard to put in place in a school. You have to be fair to both genders while making the rules apply to everyone. Students sometimes do not follow dress codes when they are in place and may be sent home from school because of it. Their clothes may be distracting to their peers or inappropriate for school grounds. To solve this problem, schools make uniforms mandatory so no student is at risk of violating dress code. To counteract this, schools might say that students should be able to wear what they want and be comfortable in it. They should not have to worry about what their teacher will think about the shirt they payed money for and picked out to wear that day. My biggest point against this is that no students like dress code. They will wear what they want, whether they are sent home from school or not.
Money is another big factor in school uniforms. You go out in the summer before school starts and buy all these new clothes you are hoping to wear. Then you find out that the school is having a school uniform. You can not take all of your clothes back, neither do you want to. You now have to spend money on a uniform or two to be able to wear everyday. That is a lot of money wasted and clothes in the closet not getting worn. Uniforms are also expensive to buy. They are usually top brand clothes so they will last longer (Lemouse, 2016). The other side of this is that you only have to buy it once. When summer comes around and it is time for new clothes, you will not have to worry about buying enough dress code appropriate clothes for your child to wear. You also will not have to worry about your child breaking dress code (ConnectUs, 2015).
Buying school clothes also separates kids by their socioeconomic background and sometimes even by gangs (Wilde & WIlde, 2016). Poorer students will not have in fashion clothes. Gang members will all wear the same colors to school. Uniforms will cause students to all fit in with one another and reduce gang violence because everyone will resemble the same. They will reduce the number of dress identified cliques.
“School uniforms help to encourage discipline because of the way some pupils wear them. If a student is found wearing a uniform incorrectly then they will get a uniform detention or be sent home to change. They also create responsibility because if you forget a part of your uniform, you will be sent to detention, which helps children to be responsible and organized.” (Debate.org,2016). Other say just the opposite of this though. They say that while they are supposed to help their attitudes and discipline, they often make them want to rebel for being forced to wear them. Some schools have more problems having to send student home for not wearing the uniform correctly, than they do their normal clothes for dress code. School uniforms are a huge controversy. You can make valid point and make a just as valid counter argument about the same exact topic.
Uniforms also make students feel a sense of belonging and school pride (Wilde & Wilde, 2016).

They force students to wear school clothes to support the school. They also make the children feel like they belong there. The students that do not fit in as well have an easier time fitting in with the other students. This causes positive changes in the school and everyone seems to come together while wearing them. But uniforms also force kids into wearing something they may or may not want to wear in the first place. They can still tell cliques apart and sometimes uniforms make the students feel as if they stick out more, being just like everyone else (ConnectUs, 2015).
School uniforms are a huge debate among public schools around the globe. They have impacted society in that they have caused debates over the real pros and cons of them, and have even caused other schools to change their perspectives about enforcing them. School uniforms have had both positive and negative effects on students everywhere. Students may feel as if they cannot be themselves, or they may feel as if they fit in more. The controversy is huge and there is no correct argument over if school uniforms are actually helping or

not.