Role of School Uniforms in Public Schools - Research Paper Example

Role of School Uniforms in Public Schools The modern society has its specific peculiarities affecting people’s life in every possible way and every possible aspect. The fact is that its influence is felt even in such a sphere as educational process, since the life style of adults serves as a kind of an example to follow by children. As a result, schoolchildren being open for everything new with their habit to absorb numerous negative things try them in their own practice. The question is about schoolchildren’s manifestation of their freedom of expression at schools as a simple cover of their disruptive behavior with its direct result of discipline problems while learning process and a need of coping with numerous relevant issues. In this respect, unification of school uniform may serve as an appropriate way for mastering of pupils’ management from the perspective of great many negative aspects caused by schoolchildren’s liberty of expression through clothing. Public schools requiring their students to wear uniforms aids in the elimination of gangs, school violence, bullying, and peer pressure, making it easy to identify intruders, and in the end, the school administration, parents, and student bodies can manage the students effectively. To begin with it must be said that usage of school uniform as means for getting rid of numerous issues related to personal appearance is a really great way for maintenance of discipline, for there are particular psychologically efficient reasons, which finds their immediate result in a comfortable feeling of both students and teachers. As for schoolchildren, school uniform helps not to feel a difference between pupils of different social classes, since everybody wears clothes of the same quality, price, color and model. At that very matter no one stands out from the crowd by other virtue than personal qualities and talents. In fact, there is a beneficial back of such a state when students know that they are all equal and may manifest their individuality only by means of knowledge. Consequently, boys and girls place a bet on receiving of proficient attainments instead of spending plenty of time for preparing for the next school day in the aspect of time-taking process of clothes choice. Academic progress as a direct result of usage of school uniform may serve as an evident proof of such an advantageous idea. Moreover, in reference to school authority, allowing public schools to mandate uniform wear for their students would aid the administration to enable more time spent on instructional leadership and less time spent on clothing-related conflicts, in turn making the endless back and forth between child, parents, and school. One way or another, valuable time would not be lost in attending to the dressing conflicts in public schools. Students would know that they have a right for self-manifestation by the means of literacy display and that unification of clothing for educational process is fixed in a school statute reflecting schoolchildren’s rights and freedoms with the mandatory condition of wearing school uniform. In such a context, there are would not be numerous moments touching aspects of inappropriate clothing of students and consuming a lot of time for clarifications of the questions instead of its beneficial applying for gaining of new data. Groves (2010) argues that schools that do not have a policy for dressing usually have problems in the sense that students tend to put on all manner of clothing, some of which border on indecency and controversy. It is natural, that modern children appreciating numerous subcultures and youth movements want to follow their vision of their image even at school. In this regard, some clothes worn by students to schools conflict with the school policies in terms of dressing code and ethical standards. No matter, it is outrageous clothes or just certain marks of a style or whatever of that kind, everything irrelevant to learning process deflects attention away from acquiring of knowledge. What is more to the point, numerous frequently happening clashes of interests concerning way of clothing take a lot out of anyone participating in them, including teachers and students who spend their time and energy for pointless arguments having no definitive results. So, it is obvious that school administrators have a hard time trying to ensure that all students dress appropriately while in school. It implies that much of the precious time that would have been used on instructional leadership is spent on attending to and solving dressing issues. Alongside with the general disputes on the subject of unsuitable appearance there goes another one. According to Mathison & Ross (2008) some of the clothing-related conflicts arise from difference in socio-economic status of students that is determined by the brands of clothes that they wear. Then it is even unsurprising that students are biased towards others on account of a particular financial situation and relevant social position. As the result, there are masses of schoolchildren humiliating their peers because of their inexpensive wear or suffering from school violence, bullying, and their peers’ pressure trigged by their non-brand clothes. Such a sad reality has entered students’ life to the extent that repeated situations of their peers’ indignity in classrooms, corridors, and lavatories are not surprising for them and they are just not astonished at seeing such horrible manifestations of abuse and pass by without any attempts to protect the oppressed (except rare cases of students’ interference into conflict situations when they want justice to be met, in their almost useless attempts). Then worsening of the situation finds its direct aftereffects of progressive aggression and violence as well as mentally bludgeon of everybody witnessing or participating in situations of violation or just verbal humbling. It is natural that victims of abuse suffer foremost. In such a way, absence of school uniform and presence of individual clothes of a particular quality and price serves as an immediate cause for prejudices with further physical or moral abjection. Therein, the obligated dressing code may be that very method for solution of the problem. Allowing school uniforms to be mandated for public school systems will minimize the wear of baggy clothing that can be used to hide weapons. Additionally, uniforms eliminate the wear of “gang related colors” which can lead to becoming and unknown target of opportunity. Whatever, ethic appearance in non-loose clothes alongside with dedicated work of school security minimizes possibilities of weapons bearing in the territory of schools. More importantly, gang leaders and gang members lose their significance in view of the fact that they cannot be identified at least in point of their mode of dress. Thus, ordinary students are not so scared to be abused by gangs, since they are not shown up so evidently at any rate. Consequently, a risk for students’ psyche to be negatively affected even by anxiety of being abused declines and people’s mental health does not suffer until close contact with abusers. In the case of considering the same situation from the perspective of gangs, in the context of better discipline accompanying by learning progress with greater self-belief of potential victims of oppression, the bad guys face an opportunity to find opposition on the part of students dressed in inexpensive or extraordinary clothes but empowered with self-confidence, for knowledge and academic progress bring it. For example, Baron (2013) gives a classic example of the student who wore baggy clothing unleashing more than ten guns that he had hid in his clothes. In the age of school violence, especially in America, school administrators should not allow baggy clothes and oversized shorts in the school compounds. The boy hid ten kinds of different ammunitions in his oversized shorts and perhaps the trend is even more serious in other schools without the uniform policy. In any case, strict following of the dressing code in public schools is able to limit smuggling of weapons to the territory of educational establishments with its further total eradication. Naturally, mandatory school uniform has its opponents among students themselves as well as their democratic parents. According to them, making school uniforms mandatory impedes each student’s freedom of expression and may even teach a negative lesson about conformity. Still, in the light of the foregoing, it becomes clear that the dressing code does not only restrict pupils’ self-manifestation but also directs it in the right way, that is, display of knowledge, personal qualities and literacy, which are acquired not only while educational process but also during the time freed from useless preparing for the next day at home in time-consuming process of wear choice. This is the very method of doubling contribution for the prosperous future of students, which do not waste valuable time by killing it with the pointless experience any longer. Nevertheless democratically adjusted schoolchildren and their parents build up their opposition to school uniform, which is based on violation of constitutional rights of a human. While the supporters of school uniforms agree that schools uniforms significantly reduce incidences of violence and crime in public schools, some parents and students see this policy as an infringement to personal freedom (Alexander & Alexander, 2012). They argue that the uniform policy where all students must be clad in navy pants or skirts and white shirts is unconstitutional in the sense that it denies the students their very right to speech and freedom of expression. But it emerged that there is an actual and extremely useful way of expression by the means of manifestation of knowledge, skills, and talents, which in its turn gives students a great chance to speak out. More to the point, taking into account possible scales of improvement of students’ abuse, a little restriction of self-expression through dressing is worth the cost, as it regulates negative aspects of particular discipline problems resulted in more negative aftereffects even including beating and murders. The best evidence of dressing code benefits may be represented by practical application of school uniform. It is really so, more and more studies as well as researches have shown more proofs in favor of the use of uniforms for wear in the public school system. Brunsma (2004) refutes claims by naysayer that uniforms infringe of the freedom of students, citing the high discipline levels in public schools with school uniform policy. School uniforms are not only good for the students, but also for the parents and the school administrators. Surely, this very point may be questioned by students. In particular, it is a well-known effective practice to teach children by the way of a personal example. In this context, teachers to wear uniform as well in order to show their union with students not only during learning process itself but even in the same way of dressing. As a result, pupils do not perceive dressing code as limitation of liberty and pay due attention to acquaintance of knowledge. And the whole valuable time is spent for this purpose, for there are no questions about clothes while classes anymore (surely, it takes some time for rooting of mandatory school uniform during which students use to wear it without irrelevant questions and verbal oppositions with school administration). So, when worn in public schools, school uniforms come with a number of benefits and therefore, public schools should formulate a policy that necessitates all students to put on school uniforms while in school. All things considered then school uniform has evident advantages for solution of discipline problems as well as for improvement of the situation of moral and physical abuse of ordinary students by gang members and their peers wearing brand-name or just expensive clothes and oppressing others who are dressed in cheaper or extravagant garments. The very effect of a particular dressing code finds its result in students’ total concentration on educational process without diffusion of their attention on the time-taking occupation of wear choice for school where there is no need to be dressed in another way that those of a comfortable cut without bright details distracting attention from acquaintance of knowledge. Moreover, the benefit of gaining self-confidence by students in such a context adds to the general progress in fighting against abuse within public schools, since there is lesser possibility to be oppressed for schoolchildren in the case of their self-belief and ability to offer at least verbal rebuff to the abusers. References Alexander, K., & Alexander, M. D. (2012). American public school law. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Baron, J. (2013). The Archive Effect: Found Footage and the Audiovisual Experience of History. Boston: Routledge. Brunsma, D. L. (2004). The school uniform movement and what it tells us about American education: A symbolic crusade. Lanham, Md: ScarecrowEducation. Groves, E. (2010). The Everything Classroom Management Book: A teacher's guide to an organized, productive, and calm classroom. Cincinnati: F & W Media. Mathison, S., & Ross, E. W. (2008). Battleground: Schools. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Read More