Are Uniforms a Good Way to Improve Student Discipline and Motivation - Coursework Example

School going age is one of the most important periods in a person’s life as most of the values, beliefs and habits emerge during this period of life.School Children do often, due to their nascent minds, engage themselves into activities which may not be healthy and can have harmful effects on their overall personality. Due to their age, they may not be able to pay for what they may be requiring to fulfill their desires and in that course parents do often pay for their children’s requirements. The theories of psychology suggest that children tend to develop as adults in different phases of their life. Cognitive Developmental theory stressed that children actively construct their own cognitive world thereby ignoring the information poured from external world. This theory basically defers from both of the above views in the fact it, on one hand, discard the view that the children fail to make a clear distinction between itself and the external world thereby living within the perspective of their mothers’ views. It also discard the view that the human development is the result of social experience as it stresses upon the child’s in-built ability to develop its own cognitive world according to his own perceptions. Piaget believed that children adapt their thinking to include new ideas. He thought that assimilation (which is an individuals incorporation of new information into their existing knowledge) and accommodations (an individuals adjustment to new information) operate even in the very young infant’s life. Newborns reflexively suck everything that touches their lips (assimilation), but, after several months of experience, they construct their understanding of the world differently. Some objects, such as fingers and the mother’s breast, can be sucked, but others, such as fuzzy blankets, should not be sucked (accommodation). Thus since the children take a lot of external influence on their personalities therefore it has often been discussed that whether inculcating discipline and motivation in them. Wearing uniforms is often considered as one way of inculcating discipline and motivation in children and are considering as good way of bringing in more discipline and motivation in children so that as they grow, they bring in more confidence, discipline and self esteem in themselves. This essay will explore the question of whether the uniforms are good way of bringing in discipline and motivation in children. Uniforms and Schools Many experts believe that uniforms can be one of the best ways to bring in discipline and motivation in children however similarly there is also an argument that they do not serve that purpose and uniforms are not the ideal way of achieving that objective. The debate is considered as ongoing as to whether the uniforms should be the part of the overall student attire or not? And if yes what results it can deliver to the student and to the parents if uniforms are considered as essential and mandatory for the school going children to wear. Expert opinion on these issues is divided as some researchers have catogerily proved it otherwise that uniform do not improve school discipline whereas some researches have empirically shown the results that use of uniforms have improved the discipline including enhanced attendance rates in schools of Ohio State.(Wilde, 2008). One of the most important aspect of whether uniforms should be mandated or not need to be viewed also in the perspective of how curriculum of the schools have been set. The premise that uniforms can alone bring in discipline is little bit arbitrary if we view it in singular perspective. The basic assumption about the education, learning and curriculum is that it must continue to confront with truth (Lu, 2006). Critical theory of the educational curriculum suggests that it is an approach to the study of schools and society that has its main function the revelation of the tacit values that underlies the enterprise and Emphasis on the negative aspects of schooling rather than providing models toward which the schools should aspire. There are however various weaknesses in the differing ideologies being implemented all over the work in different parts of the world including models emanating from Sweden and Denmark which focus on the free education ideology for all. Besides there are other ideologies suggesting the differing approaches to the curriculum development? Curriculum ideologies are defined as beliefs about what schools should teach, for what ends, and for what reasons. All schools have at least one ideology - and usually more than one - that provides direction to their functions. An ideology can be tacit rather than explicit. Curriculum is the way through which these different ideologies can be implemented. The curriculum refers to the content and purpose of an educational program together with their organization. Curriculum is one of developing knowledge through which it can be organized into subjects and fields for educational purposes. Curriculum is also a way to ask questions as to how the knowledge and learning are linked to particular educational purposes. It is because of this reason that curriculum is considered as a best tool for learning. As many pedagogues have noted in their work, both radical pedagogy and critical theory have struggled Sisyphus-like against the forces of vocationalization, corporatization, the institutionalized Romantic Humanist educational curriculum, and the commodification of knowledge that currently plague institutes of learning today. Apart from that there was also an attempt to institutionalize the critical theory. In this issue, theorists and teachers discuss the practical difficulties in “transforming thinking and revising habitual ways of reading texts and reading the world in their students (Webb, 2006). Ideological positions pertaining to curriculum and to other aspects of education exist in a state of tension or conflict. They are competing on what schools should teach and for what ends in a political marketplace. Regardless of how powerful an ideological view may be in an individuals or even groups orientation to the world, it is seldom adequate to determine what the school curriculum shall be. There is a political process that inevitably must be employed to move from ideological commitment to practical action. In pluralistic societies, the process almost always leads to certain compromises. As a result, the public school curriculum seldom reflects a pure form of any single ideological position. Examples of pure ideologies in action in schools are rare. Apart from the curriculum and how curriculum ideologies should be developed to accommodate the children and re-model their attitudes and motivation levels, there are other reasons for bringing in standardization into the dressing children use to wear. Many experts believe that there is a link between the dressings children wear in school to their violent tendencies that they show at schools. It has been largely observed that the growing fashion based dressing especially in urban area schools where children mostly wear gang like dresses tend to develop more violent tendencies in them therefore effectively forcing them to adopt behaviors and activities with violent tendencies.(AKing, 1998). However one must also view this in the perspective of how intelligence is being acquired by the children in those schools and what kind of societal influences they carry with them when they come to schools. Intelligence is normally considered as a person’s ability to acquire knowledge, apply knowledge and engage in abstract reasoning. It is the power of one’s intellect and is considered as one of the very important aspects of the person’s overall well being. Similarly as we have discussed above that during development of a person’s life, he or she tend to have influence of social trends. Since personality develop into series of stages however, many psychologists believed that the social experience across the whole life span of humans have impact on them. As against the Lacanian view that the child in his early life fail to distinguish between self thereby living with his mother’s perspective, Erikson believed that the childhood is very critical in human development and personality continue to develop beyond the age of five years also. Erikson also set to disagreed with the Freudian view that the personality development can only be attributed to the sexuality. The stages of the development according to Erikson are impacted by social experiences and each stage has a mixture of the traits attained at each stage, but personality development is considered successful if the individual has more of the "good" traits than the "bad" traits. Thus the growing violence in the schools and wearing of gang like clothing is an acquired phenomenon from the society and the culture within which children use to live. The current state of clothing in schools would therefore suggest that “With respect to gang-related clothing, gang members frequently roam streets near schools and often enter schools. Hence, the color of clothing that student’s wear can result in their becoming targets of intentional or unintentional violence. In addition, the style of clothing popular among children today arose from the clothing of inner-city gangs, who have worn baggy pants and oversized shirts that could hide weapons and drugs from law enforcement officials. With such clothing glamorized by music videos and television sitcoms, more children wear similar styles of baggy, oversized shirts and pants to school. Such clothing can become a means of transporting weapons or drugs into school and thus indirectly increase school violence. Add to this the finding that one in three youths reports easy access to handguns and the concern for school safety becomes especially crucial”(AKing, 1998). Thus the implementation of uniforms into school can serve following purposes: 1) It can help preventing the formation of gangs on school campuses thus improving the overall attitudes of the students. 2) It encourage discipline since all the children will be wearing the same uniform therefore it can provide an opportunity to create more disciplined students. 3) As discussed above that the students tend to take a lot of inspiration from their environment where trendy cloths tend to dominate the scene therefore there arise a strong sense of pressure on the student to look like those who wear the trendy cloths. Allowing uniforms therefore will help reducing those pressures on the students. 4) However, one of the most important benefits of implementing the uniforms into schools would be to remove the economic barriers between the students. Wearing expensive cloths creates a sense of distinction between the children at school thus virtually create status consciousness in students thus putting strong psychological pressures on the students. However on the other hand, it is also being argued that restricting students to uniforms also restrict the students’ right for freedom of expression and can create substantial financial burden on relatively poor families.(Wilde, 2008). Further it has also been argued that the dress codes should also be implemented for the teachers also so that those who teach the children at school tend to develop discipline in them also. Conclusion Uniforms can be an effective way of bringing in discipline and motivation in children. As children tend to acquire their behaviors from external environment therefore they develop tendencies during their school age which may not help them to develop as better persons. It is because of this reason that many experts believe that uniforms can be an effective way of re-modeling child behavior so that not only grow as disciplined individuals but as motivated and socially constructive citizens of the society. This would improve upon the overall well being of the society as well as the individuals also besides serving the greater purpose of the greater good of the society. Bibliography 1) AKing, K. (1998). Should school uniforms be mandated in elementary schools? Retrieved June 22, 2008, from http://wicip.org: http://wicip.org/ncs/forumuniformseval.htm 2) Wilde, M. (2008, January). Do Uniforms Make Schools Better? Retrieved June 21, 2008, from Great Schools: http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/showarticle/ga/361 3) Lu, Wuping(2006).Curriculum Ideologies/Theory, accessed June 21,2008 from http://ldt.stanford.edu/~luwuping/blog/curriculum/ 4) Webb,Rebecca, (2006), From Romantic Humanist to Postmodern Pedagogy: How the Alien Becomes Normative in Contemporary Education, accessed June 22, 2008 from http://radicalpedagogy.icaap.org/content/issue8_2/webb.html Read More