School is in the ‘business’ of learning. School is the place where the next lawyers, bankers, CPA’s and Doctors are given the fundamentals of working in this economy. One of the basics of our culture in the working world is conservative dressing, dress code, or even uniforms.
What is wrong with sending our kids the message that they are in ‘the business of learning’ by enforcing dress codes?School is also the place where the next actors, writers, artists, politicians, inventors, designers and musicians are trained. School uniforms send a clear early-life message to students that conformity is important and creativity is not, that authority is allowed to abuse it’s power and constrain our constitutional right to free speech and expression. Students learn from uniforms that their individuality, political opinions and religious rights are unimportant, as is their education: students are regularly suspended for non compliance to the uniform code even if their school work is excellent. If uniform-requiring schools were actually in ‘the business of learning’ this would not occur.
Many proponents say that school uniforms help to reduce the amount of violent out bursts of gang members in schools. To them I say why don’t we get rid of the gang members. Why don’t we simply place these gang members that are so prevalent into a more suitable learning environment, like boot camp. If you go out and look there is little research done to prove that school violence is reduced. The only statistic on school uniforms comes from school principals and liaison officers. People often say that kid that wear baggy clothes are hiding drugs and weapons.
This cannot possibly be true; if I were to carry a weapon or drugs into school I could do the same thing in a tighter pair of jeans or stick them in my bookbag. Schools need to perhaps invest in something like a medal detector or a drug dog. NOT implement school uniforms. People say that school uniforms make it easier to identify people at schools that don’t belong there. Think about this situation, you are at school and suddenly there is an earthquake tornado or some other natural disaster.
Sadly most of the students are killed, later the parents are called in to help identify some of the remains. How are these parents going to figure out if this corpse is their child? Hmmm maybe by what they saw their child walk out of the house in that morning, so uniforms actually could cause a problem instead of help fix them. School uniforms are also quite the biggest waste of money. Think about it for a second, if you go out later at night with your friends are you really going to wear your uniform? No most likely not, uniforms have only one place that you can wear them to and that is school.
So if I have these couple of outfits hanging up in my closet that I can only wear to one place, I have basically just wasted all the money that I used to spend on these outfits. Finally school uniforms violate MY personal freedom of expression that was granted to me by the US constitution. I challenge any president to go out and try to revoke one of my constitutionally granted rights. No court in the US would allow him to take away my rights. So if someone tells you that that school dress codes prepare you for the future tell them NO.
They actually cramp my style and violate my freedom of expression as stated in the US constitution. .
