Uniformity

School uniforms are unnecessary, evil or not. I have yet to see anything approaching conclusive evidence that uniforms or dress codes improve the school experience for anyone.

I know we've all heard the arguments. Uniforms instill discipline, or dignity, or respect. They prevent people from fighting about clothes, their expense, or rarity. They keep children from wearing things that are inappropriate without making recourse to subjective judgment which is hard to justify. They save money. They save time.

I've only ever believed that uniforms save time. For some people. I wear practically the same thing every day anyway, so it would save me no time to wear a uniform, but for some people it does reduce the amount of time they spend obsessing over their clothes. But it doesn't conclusively improve the quality of academics; that statistic simply proves that schools with good academics also tend to have dress codes. No causality there.

I approve of uniforms more than dress codes because dress codes are invariably subjective and take way too much effort. But why can't school uniforms be comfortable? For that matter, why can't any uniform be comfortable? Why can't the school uniform be jeans and a t-shirt?

The answer is that uniforms aren't designed to be useful; they're designed to enforce uniformity. That pun isn't really a pun, but it's intended. Uniforms are often not designed for utility or comfort either, which I find a little annoying. Well, a lot annoying, in fact.

The bottom line is that making everyone look the same isn't as useful as they make it out to be, and it's ultimately unsuccessful. School children in particular are deeply concerned with individuality, and perhaps rightly so. It's a crucial time in their development, when they create an identity for themselves. Wearing a uniform won't stop that.

To be brutally frank, I think the real reason school uniforms are so popular is because people own stock in uniform companies, or they secretly want their children to be more corporate or military. Ulterior motives, certainly. Why not let kids be kids? It's not any less effective.