Ask Lemmy

I always hated it growing up, too. My school didn't even have a uniform, only a dress code, and I hated that, too.

But my kids go to a school with a uniform, and now I can see the advantages:

• this school subsidizes the uniforms heavily, even to the point of giving them away outright to students in need, so it represents a form of clothing that is affordable for all

• kids can't fight with parents about what they wear to school, because it's predetermined

• every kid wears the same thing, which helps smooth out class-indicators: kids don't get bullied for wearing hand-me-downs or unfashionable clothes because everyone wears the same thing

• makes it very easy to determine who is supposed to be on campus and who is not; similarly, since the school has a big emphasis on outside-the-classroom learning, makes it very easy to identify students out on fieldwork

• saves me money since the uniforms are unisex and my son can wear the hand-me-downs of his older sisters

And to address your criticism: Yes, uniforms tend to promote group cohesion but that's not always a bad thing. It encourages collaboration over competition, for example.

There are valid arguments for and against, but I really don't think the word 'authoritarianism' is at all applicable here.

For me, the uniform was liberating. People who wanted to bully me needed to find something more substantive than just my clothes. Bullies tend to be stupid, so this was hard for them.

If your individuality is all tied up in your physical appearance, try to develop your mind a bit. I am nonconformist in a thousand ways, each of which is more important than how i dress.

I suppose it probably seems strange to an outsider but in a country where it’s the norm for every school, it didn’t feel like that to me at all. I see it more as an equaliser? In a way I also kind of miss not having to decide what to wear every day.

Honestly, my main concern about school uniforms is that I think they ought to be standardised and subsidised, because the expense can sometimes be a problem.

Not at all. On the contrary, I found them quite liberating, for 2 main reasons:

• not having to decide what to wear every day
• I was in a British private school, where students came from upper middle class to upper class backgrounds. A lot of the really rich students were shallow, superficial, and cruel. If we didn’t have uniforms we would have had a serious bullying problem against those who couldn’t afford to wear high end/designer brands.

The only downside is that we had to pay for the uniforms, and they were quite expensive compared to the awful materials they were made of. I had 3 sets on rotation.

It's only authoritarian if the teachers / administration also wear a similar uniform, but slightly different to denote rank.

Otherwise, it's actually accidentally kind of socialistic, in that the divisions of class between your peers becomes less obvious, and there's more cohesion with your fellow students versus those in authority. It's easier for the students to rally together against something when they're all wearing the same thing.

Otherwise, it's actually beneficial to authoritarians to have no dress code, because student cliques would strengthen, and infighting would be more common.

For the USA, think about how both major parties use color to help separate people. If the colors of Democrats and Republicans were the same though, the division would be weaker.

Uniforms have historically been used to unify groups rather than to control them.

I loved school uniforms as a deeply autistic young man who really, REALLY struggled with all the silent peer pressures of fashion.

There was an outfit I could wear without half a thought every day and no one cared.

School uniforms level the outward socioeconomic presentation of students.

If it weren't school uniforms, then the oppositional-defiant disorder would present in some students another way. Not statistically relevant.

My post history and reputation will back that I am left as fuck, but I love uniforms because I hate clothes and all the stupid ass stipulations society has purposely and inadvertently put on them. Spending any more than 5 secs selecting what's gonna cover me for the day is already too long.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all the ideological arguments made against them, and don't counter them, I simply yearn to live in a world where we're ALL on the same team and working together, and what one wears means fuck and all.

Soccer uniforms have to be same color too it's not "authoritarianism."

Also idk about psychology but just a tiny bit of cohesion is much better over extreme individualism no?

I work in schools. Pre-uniforms, there were so so many girls who arrived in appropriate clothes and then removed the top layer. Children shouldnt wear clothes to school that are more revealing than what you'd see in a bar. Social media teaches them that the goal is attention and it doesn't matter if it's positive or negative.

I didn't have good casual clothes in school.

On the other hand, the uniforms were priced to the point of extortion, so I'd say they came off as elitist flexing, if not authoritarian.

The only winner is getting kids decent clothes that aren't expensive or drab. And yes, there absolutely is a middle ground for that.

Imo it's much better than a cult of clothing brands.

Oh absolutely can be, and is absolutely often used as such.

However, as usual depends on the context. Properly subsidized it can help students not only gave greater pride in their appearance and success in classes if you aren't having to worry about not getting good clothes or any that fit properly.

On the other hand it can be cripplingly over expensive and cheap ass.

Not inherently, but I went to a school where the enforcement of the uniform code was overly Draconian. For example, there was a rule that boots were not allowed, so at the beginning of term, they had students line up and pull their trousers legs up so that an assistant headteacher could measure how high the shoes went (because that was one of the ways they defined shoes Vs boots). My step-brother's new school shoes were 1cm too tall, and they sent him home with a note saying that boots weren't permitted.

My step-mum called up the school and went ballistic at them for it, refusing to buy another pair of shoes. This was a socioeconomically poor area in which many families would struggle to afford one pair of shoes at the beginning of the year, so this assholish enforcement of the rules was absurd. If you can only tell that the shoes aren't permitted when a student pulls up their trouser legs, what is the problem?

I think that some of the logic behind the strict uniform code was that there was a perception that higher performing schools in better areas would have nicer school uniforms, and I wonder whether they were trying to work backwards from that, as if maintaining the uniform code could defy all the socioeconomic adversity that families in this area faced.

Aside from the excessive enforcement, I like the uniform code. It can mask income disparities within the student body if everyone is wearing the same thing. I felt insecure about how poor my family was, and it would've been worse without the uniform, I think. I also liked not having to think about what to wear, and it seemed to make it easier for my mum to strategise laundry to ensure we always had clean uniform to wear.

I also liked wearing a blazer because it meant I always had reliable pockets. Important things like my phone and my bus pass went in my inside pocket, which had a zip. Then there were two large exterior pocket which were good for pens and the like. It made it easier to avoid losing or forgetting things.

I think a happy medium would be possible. School uniforms could act as a blank canvas on which students could experiment with other forms of self expression.

They're definitely a form of oppression.

I'd say school in general is a form of authoritarianism. Take a look at US schools compared to schools in North Korea, and they are extremely similar.

Things a common grade school essay question which I think we’re helping OP answer

No, it is not all these words.

When all the kids are dressed equally, they are (partially) freed from the pressure of modern fashion life, vanity, comparing their parents' money etc.

They're about training children to comform and obbey arbitrary rules created by people in position of authority and to value impression more than behaviour.

Of the countries I lived in, Britain was the one that had most of this shit and was also the one with the strongest "know your place" and "keep up appearences" mindsets of them all, especially amongst the middle and upper classes which were the ones were this shit was more common (there was a time of working class cultural significance during the 70s and 80s, which were a veritable explosion of creativity with movements like "punk", but the social mobility and freedom that created it were crushed in the meanwhile, so working class kids can't make it in the Arts anymore and that whole class is back at being culturally irrelevant outside fighting each other after football games).

Yep. They also seem to completely ignore neurodiverse people; I don't know what I'd have done if my school had uniforms.

As far as i know, main motivation is to reduce mobbing but it doesn't work like that.

But it seems school uniforms do happen more in more authorithan countries. But that can be a side-effect too.

Schools in my area had a dress code, and my school almost succeeded at requiring a select jacket model as a must (done by a single local company connected to a school admin, wink-wink), but faced backlash over poor price/quality balance 🙃

One of the unusual upsides, many men well in their 20s, who otherwise couldn't be bothered, had their high school formal suits to wear on future funerals and weddings. I was one of them and that was handy.

If the uniform should be there, to ensure it's not hostile, it may be:

1. Of basic rules. Formal dresses, dark under the waist line, white over it.
2. Civilian models, without a glimpse of cop/military details and ranks, insignias.
3. Common to everyone without any color differentiation (and requirements to buy it in exact shade of a color).
4. Rather cheap or even subsidized, shared from older to younger kids, because children are frequently growing out of them and it's a bummer to buy ten+ sets of dresses.
5. Purposely unisex and non-sexualized models.

In elementary school we had a cheap (literally cheap, 5 euro) uniform that covered everything so it would protect the underneath clothes from inks, foods, spills. Also it didn't matter if someone wore some expensive clothes as they were covered.

I noticed immediately from the first days in high school how something like that would have been useful as bullies would pick anyone about their clothing appearance. So there was an "unofficial" uniform, if you didn't wear a brand name sweater then you were a loser to bully.

Now, I saw the elite schools uniform, expensive shirt under an expensive cardigan and a tie... that is ridiculous and I feel a way to take more money from the rich families as the expensive uniform can be bought only from them and need to purchase multiple sets to wear over a week

I’m very anti-authoritarian, but man I wish we had uniforms in school where I grew up. At the time I would have hated it, but in hindsight it would have saved me a lot of bullying. Equality != authoritarian in this case.

I was vaguely aware of them being a thing elsewhere as a kid. Back then someone even thought they were cool because of Harry Potter films. Never thought of it as authoritarianism, just pointless.

But now that you say it, placing restrictions to make people look the same is kind of authoritarian.