06-18-2010, 02:09 AM
I wonder if this list is where the bizarre hate mail has been coming from. It seems that someone on your list has re-posted a piece of a letter of mine I wrote over ten years ago to someone asking me for my opinion of the pros and cons of school uniforms in public schools. I gave it, and gave permission to that person to post it to a list. Pieces of it have since proliferated by cut and paste to various other lists on the subject, including this one now, where someone else has posted a bit of it to your list with attribution. This is fine, but please don't assume it is any remark directly written by me in reference to your own school controversy. Firstly, I have no idea if you are a public or private school (and private schools often have compelling reasons for uniforms), or if this is a school where the lesson you are trying to teach is a basic conformity to authority (as in a reform school for students who are in danger of becoming criminal), indeed I don't even know where this school is (US? Canada?), so I can't really say much of anything about it specifically. I do maintain that a uniform, any uniform, exists to either voluntarily (sports team) or involuntarily (prisoners) express conformity to a group. Whether you find that a desirable outcome in your case is up to you. As for the person who doubted I would approve of patriotic clothing. He/she is wrong. At the age of 12 in public school in 1971-72 I went to school wearing all flag patterned shirt, flag belt, flag bell-bottoms, flag hairband, and flag converse type hi tops, none of which I would have been permitted to wear if I had been stuck in a school that insisted on uniforms or a dress code. Dress codes tend to stifle all sorts of religious, political and personal expressions pretty much evenly (or if not, expect a visit from the ACLU) so you can't put them in unless you are prepared to have your own expression in politics or religion banned as well. Don't look for a uniform to magically bring about good manners and an end to gang violence, but do look on it as a way to minimize the appearance of class/income differences among your students, an easier to enforce dress-code than loose guidelines, and a way to set your students apart from those of other schools on the street. Down sides include doubling clothing costs for parents, a general boring (though neater) visual atmosphere at school, and those pesky conformity issues.
I personally tend to disapprove of uniforms for American public schools because as a nation we have a longstanding tradition of individualism that makes them highly suspect in any state-required school. I don't see problems with it for a private (voluntary) school. I see why the UK poster does not have a problem with it even in their state run schools however, because UK parents are (I've read) better able to choose among several state schools, so again, the choice tends to be voluntary. The British also tend to prefer uniforms because they tend to minimize the appearance of class/income differences, which given their history, actually can increase a student's access to individual success rather than dampen it. In a very diverse income and class ridden school it might be needed here.
All of these are general remarks which you may or may not find useful or interesting. As I've said, I don't know what your situation is, so please don't get the idea that I'm out here telling you what to do. The only reason I even found out about this was a name search that told me people I'd never met or talked to were saying snarky things about me because someone quoted a piece of one of my old letters. And now, I will bugger off the list, never learning where or what waukegan is.
I personally tend to disapprove of uniforms for American public schools because as a nation we have a longstanding tradition of individualism that makes them highly suspect in any state-required school. I don't see problems with it for a private (voluntary) school. I see why the UK poster does not have a problem with it even in their state run schools however, because UK parents are (I've read) better able to choose among several state schools, so again, the choice tends to be voluntary. The British also tend to prefer uniforms because they tend to minimize the appearance of class/income differences, which given their history, actually can increase a student's access to individual success rather than dampen it. In a very diverse income and class ridden school it might be needed here.
All of these are general remarks which you may or may not find useful or interesting. As I've said, I don't know what your situation is, so please don't get the idea that I'm out here telling you what to do. The only reason I even found out about this was a name search that told me people I'd never met or talked to were saying snarky things about me because someone quoted a piece of one of my old letters. And now, I will bugger off the list, never learning where or what waukegan is.