If your school district is like ours, it’s that time of year again when parents are warned what their kids can’t wear to school, and kids buy back to school clothes, many of which are designed to contradict dress codes. Let’s talk about school dress codes.
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Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
I wanted to say that class sizes should be smaller but it’s because it would allow teachers to be more in tune with individual’s progress and generally responsive to kids to enhance learning. I don’t know what class size has to do with uniformity and whatever that means, if the point is to increase uniformity, I’m against it.
In this country we have school uniform, which at my kids school is rigorously enforced right down to the colour of socks, including socks for PE. Any boy without a school tie gets to wear a “tie of shame” for the day. More serious infractions of school uniform get a headteacher’s detention. Students must wear their blazers at all times unless the headteacher has declared shirt sleeve order (for warm weather), and even then they must have their blazers with them.
The advantages of a uniform are many: no competition amongst students over who has or has not got the latest fashion item, there’s no wasting time working out what to wear of a morning, students of all backgrounds wear the same clothes, rich or poor, and because everyone is wearing the same thing clothing choices don’t distract from lessons.
Some schools are more strict than others, some specifying only a colour for a skirt, for instance, whereas others will dictate a particular style as well. All schools try to keep skirts at least knee length, but some are much more successful at enforcing that than others. Sometimes there are complaints that the uniform is expensive, but kids would need clothes to wear anyway.
As an adult I can appreciate the practicality of a uniform. When I was a kid in school and had to wear one I hated it. Simply hated it. The sense I had then was that the school was attempting to eradicate any semblance of personality in us. This may explain why so many in the US military get tattoos shortly after taking the uniform if they don’t already have any. In fact, the military has recently had to further expand its tolerance for tattoos and their placement since the “need” — that they, ostensibly create — is so undeniable.
As I say, I can understand the intent as an adult. But preferable to me to let kids have that venue for expression. Even if what they “express” is anti-social or anti-authorithy, better to understand and deal with what’s going on than mask and avoid it by the superficial appearance that it doesn’t exist.
As for students who do not have adequate clothes, again, a problem that needs a solution. Uniforms are compassionate in this circumstance but don’t address the central issue that will become apparent to other students nonetheless.
I’m sure I’m an outlier on this issue but, having had the experience (in the US in the 50s when it was not a part of the general culture), I can’t get behind them.
As the parent of a slow moving 9yo girl, I’m all for uniforms. Either get rid of all distractions or don’t police clothing. This middling enforcement of religious standards of shoulder porn is frustrating.
1 – Yes you have the right to express yourself, that’s what an education is for – so you can use your brain and words to express yourself.
2 – I agree you can’t come naked to school; and part of what we learn in school is how to function in society – and dressing appropriately for the occasion. But this is all very subjective, see: no capris, but skirts are ok in Rexburgia.
3 – I’m all for: you must wear underwear, it must be covered (thus ruling out tube tops and low hanging pants, etc.)
YMMV
As a high school student, I would have vehemently opposed school uniforms, but now as an adult, they make so much sense to me. Dress codes are too subjective to enforce equally, and in a place like Utah, they disproportionately target non-LDS youth.
Looking back, one thing I hate about dress codes without uniforms is that they not only lead to teachers having to police students’ dress, but they lead to students policing each other. I cringe to remember a time when I tattled on a fellow student because I thought the design on his t-shirt was inappropriate. I don’t even remember what was on it, but I do remember the tension my overzealousness caused in the classroom. I was convinced that I had a right to control his clothing instead of minding my own business.
My kids had to wear uniforms in Singapore for the first time ever, and I have to say, they loved it and so did we all. It was difficult to buy the types of clothes they wanted to wear over there anyway – all of us were taller than average for the country – so we didn’t miss the drama of back to school shopping. Plus, the uniforms the school chose were very comfortable. It didn’t take the kids more than a few weeks to kind of prefer uniforms to free dress.
My kids attend a uniform school now. We definitely like it for the most part. The one exception for me is the insistance on *all black* shoes. It is almost impossible to find completely black shoes much less in westerner sizes. The sociologist in me wants to suggest uniforms with no requirements for kids shoes. Let them go crazy and have an outlet for expressing some individuality while keeping the vast majority of advantages of uniforms. Turns out that no matter how hard you try to enforce exact uniform standards kids find ways to use the clothing or other things to mark group boundaries and status. You can’t totally supress it but shoes can only be so distracting and it stops modesty issues and fights in their tracks unless you are among the crazy people that believe flip flops are immodest.
Shorts and skirts less than two inches long? I can’t even visualize that. Wouldn’t that be a belt? I can’t even figure out how shorts with those dimensions would even be constructed. Maybe I don’t want to know.
rah, responding to your shoe comment, all black here too, but readily available in lots of styles and sizes. However, regulations defining the kind of shoe are still in place in order to avoid excessive heels, extreme styles etc.
No dress codes at my high school back in the day. Sometimes girls wore bikini with very short cut-offs because they were headed to beach afterwards. Classes of nearly 40 for the most part. We were fine. The only reason for dress code is to break gang colors at school, IMO.
Kids at my daughter’s school love their uniforms. Pretty simple one though, really. Polo shirts with school logo, shorts or pants. But the school is for high functioning special needs students and the uniforms help them break through and get dressed without the decisions overwhelming them before their a.m. meds kick in.
By high functioning, I mean that when she took the psat, she would have qualified for national merit scholar except she was too young at only thirteen.
I’m all for uniforms, as I think it helps those who have no fashion sense or funds to buy a fashion sense to not have to deal with that extra level of school striation. I’d have only two concerns, if it came to anyone asking me my opinion on it:
First, who gets to help pay for these uniforms for families whose clothing budget is sell below the cost of a new uniform (or two, plus shoes).
Second, why gender differentiate? I say give a range of options, long and short pants, long and short skirt. Let boys embrace the kilt and don’t penalize the girls who prefer to keep their legs covered. If we want to control the expression through clothes, let’s at least give some options to express.
I agree with the uniforms-or-nothing camp. I went to a high school with no dress code and you saw almost everything: sagged pants, tube tops, crop tops, mesh or sheer tops over bras, boys wearings skirts, boys wearing make up, flip flops, pajamas, kilts, stilettos, Mickey-mouse or rabbit ear headbands, clip on animal tails, mohawks, temporary sharpie tattoos, body paint, corsets, and bright red, green, and blue hair. That might sound like the Burning Man of high schools, but it really wasn’t very distracting. We were one of the best performing high schools in the state. The only students I ever saw get called out by teachers for wearing inappropriate clothing were guys wearing t-shirts with very prominent obscene words or pictures. Teachers would just give them a hard time about it and they usually wouldn’t wear it again.
The biggest downside was a definite grouping of students by dress style (goths vs. skaters vs. cool vs. preppy vs. weirdos, etc). I was probably one of the poorest and worst dressed students in school. I was never teased outright, but I did hear people discussing my clothes sort of incredulously–“Didn’t she wear that a couple days ago??” and that kind of thing. But even with uniforms, I’m sure I would’ve ended up in my brother’s hand-me-down uniforms and been patently un-cool. Overall the lack of dress code actually taught me to be more accepting of people no matter how they dressed.
For some reason, I actually find it a little ironic that so many people answered “visible underwear”. Especially coming from people who are presumably, or at least were at one time LDS. I can’t articulate exactly and I’m not trying to offend people, but it just seems to me that LDS people’s underwear is showing WAY more than ‘normal’ underwear. For some LDS, it even seems to be a badge of honor. As for those who did answer “visible underwear”, I’m wondering if they were envisioning lacey bras and thongs, or boxers, and other underwear along those lines on high school students, and if perhaps they might have been less likely to have responded “visible underwear” if they thought they were dealing with already endowed LDS who were wearing garments. And if so, why they’d be more offended by seeing ‘worldly’ underwear, than seeing garments….
Though at times I’m very much a “rugged individualist”, I yet feel that school uniforms are a great idea. At my daughter’s school, they have it, but it’s not like how they do it at a typical Catholic school or in Japan. That is, the kids can wear slacks or even jeans, and girls can wear modest skirts, their limit is that they wear a school T-shirt, which comes in several colors. When it’s cool (I’d hardly describe the Sacramento area as having an honest-to-“Gawd” winter like in “Yew-Tah”) they can wear a school T-Shirt that can be white, grey, or black. Kids can’t wear “gaudy” pants or skirts, and no ball caps, or any item that in the judgement of the staff can be construed as gang-related. The reality is that during these impressionable years some kids are “wannabes” as far as the gang culture is concerned, and certainly the school system (in my daughter’s case, San Juan Unified) has a duty to provide an environment where this thuggish culture is curtailed.
I mean sweat shirt for cool weather…
My high school didn’t have uniforms, and the school atmosphere was anti-clique for some reason. I don’t know how it happened but there wasn’t flat out physical bullying between classes.
The most “risque” I saw was a female student in a white dress that was really a shirt and wearing baby-blue bottoms. I think issues with dress are tied with how much attention you give them.
I’m not a big fan of dress codes, but I can accept that a school should be able to restrict certain types of clothing, as long as they’re clearly defined. What I don’t accept are ambiguous phrases like “extreme hairstyles”, “profanity”, and “tight clothing”. When a dress code includes non-defined terms like this, it’s left up to the authority figures at the school to dictate according to their own whims and personal biases, and perhaps even personal dislike of certain students, inconsistently and unfairly.
When my oldest sister (20 years my senior) was in high school, she got sent home for wearing sandals (the dean claimed that “the heels are the sexiest part of a woman’s body”) and for having purple hair (a dye experiment that went wrong).
We just got a voice message from the school that yoga pants can only be worn if the butt is covered with a long shirt (fat chance finding a long shirt in the stores my daughter is shopping in). I don’t understand the vitriol targeting yoga pants. They are basically sweat pants in my book – a bit too casual to be worn in public, probably, but not worn to attract sexual attention. Worn because they are comfortable and stretchy when you don’t feel like trying. They are what I wear when I don’t care what I look like (and I don’t look bad in them).
Re: Youga pants. Depends upon the woman. With some, little is left to the imagination. No that I MIND, because I don’t, but I wouldn’t allow my 14 y.o. daughter to cavort about in public with them. So yes, the school in effects punishes some girls b/c a few of them would look provocative in them…not necessarily to an old goat like me (to me, they’re kids all the way through college), but imagine the young lads with the raging hormones getting an eyeful of a young lady attired thus. You have all kinds of issues with the kids all over each other, sexual harassment, etc. Note that I don’t really place the burden exclusively on the girls…a young fellow with the six-pack abs wearing a bare-midriff mesh shirt, IMO, is just as objectionable for the same reason, just going the other way. Schools don’t want to deal with it or be perceiving as promoting a culture where girls draw unwelcome (well, I HOPE it’s unwelcome!) attention.
At some point, we’ll just issue them all a burlap sack that extends from shoulders to ankles, with holes cut for the neck and limbs.
Pres Clark opened a devotional last semester by saying: “ladies, leggings aren’t pants!” and people clapped and cheered. ugh.
re: yoga pants – seriously? what’s the different between yoga pants and skinny jeans? they both show the shape but one is thicker material. Just stop.
That which is obsessed over becomes a fetish. If we don’t want our boys to freak out about shoulder porn, we need to not freak out about shoulders. Exchange shoulders for anything else, including two piece swimsuits)
As much as I admired SWK (he was “Profit” at the time I joined the Church, and like all on Ferengenar, LoL, I followed him or them…), I wonder at times about his thought processes re: chastity. Example: “….. And men will not love her more because her neck or back is
bare.” I guess in the old boy’s view an attractive woman wearing a one-piece with the back exposed to just where the “tramp stamp” would nowadays go is enticing men to sin. Sorry, Spencer, whilst I otherwise practically hung on your every word (I’m not getting off easy on this one, har dee har har har…) this is where you lost me, as I’ve been to the pool or beach many a time, and such a lovely sight produces at most a smile but would hardly raise my heart rate. I think of one of my faves WWII flicks (The Longest Day, 1962) with a scene where the lovely Irina Demick (many mistake her for Sophia Loren) plays a French Resistance fighter who uses her feminine charms to smuggle some guys in a haycart past a German checkpoint. Perfectly acceptable, IMHO, and all the fanservice a man needs, but SWK would consider it “sinful”? Sheesh….
“Shoulder Porn”, Kristine A. You produced a strong chuckle with that one. Ever heard of “Rule 34”? For those that haven’t yet gone off the deep end like me, it means that IF it exists, SOMEONE has done a porn of it in SOME fashion. Is there a “Rule 35”? Yes, and it sez, IF somehow there isn’t a porn of it, there shortly will be. Once I Googled “Rule 34 Berta” (the sassy housekeeper from Two and a Half Men) just to prove a point. Whoa! No shortage of material there! The mere number of links and the listing under “images” told me enough, I felt NO need to proceed any further. Confirmed, there’s no shortage of sick SOBs out there with too much time on their hands. With all due respect to Conchata Farrell (her sass and wit makes her the “breakout character” of that series, IMHO), there are some things that even yours truly won’t touch!
Schools have what is admittedly a tough job with the moral panic on the subject that comes from both social conservatives (like active LDS) and self-styled ‘feminists’ (ranging from those that understandably insist that being female is not usually a disqualifier to the hopefully very few ‘FemiNazis’) harping on even the legit expression of male sexuality. Since the schools mission is to ‘teach’ (what the ‘cirriculum’ is supposed to be is beyond the scope of this blog and post), the safest route (at least for school bureaucrats) is where the kids are effectively neutered and spayed. It doesn’t help that popular media culture promotes “Clueless” as the high school norm, even some 20 years after it first came out”
If my daughter goes on a trip with her friends, the mini-bar will be LOCKED if I’ve anything to say about it.