Does it ever feel like your kids take forever to get ready in the morning for school, only because they can’t pick what to wear? I know for a fact that my parents have felt this way before, and this led me to wonder, would I still be spending this much time getting ready for school if I had to wear a uniform?
Today, I’ll be discussing why we should consider introducing school uniforms in the public education system to benefit students. I have three main points I’d like to discuss with you today. First off, I’ll explain what dress codes are, and why they pose potential problems when there is no mandated uniform. Then, I’ll introduce you to my proposal of introducing school uniforms in our public education system, before finally concluding with some statistics to prove my point.
Dress Codes: A Double-Edged Sword
What exactly are dress codes? According to the Oxford Dictionary, a dress code is a set of rules which specifies what you can and cannot wear. They were first introduced in a school setting around the 1990s in the United States as a response to “increasing student-discipline problems,” according to the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University. While dress codes started off as something generic, they have changed throughout the years and are sometimes viewed as discriminatory.
In most public schools, dress codes are generally directed towards females. Many schools have rules against showing a certain amount of skin in the shoulder area, as well as how long our skirts should be. A large portion of dress codes are targeted towards the female population. In fact, according to a study done by the Government Accountability Office in 2020, a whopping 90% of dress code rules impose limits on clothing that are often worn by females.
Being dress-coded repeatedly can pose a distraction for students, even if the students are in the wrong. If a student is dress-coded often, they could possibly spend an even longer amount of time getting ready for school so their outfit isn’t breaking a dress code. This would result in the student wasting a lot of time, simply because they are trying to perfect their outfit.
Additionally, without a uniform policy, a student’s socioeconomic status could be obvious. When students are not required to wear uniforms, they might spend a long time getting ready before school, trying to make themselves look appealing and of higher class. Students who lack resources, on the other hand, might not be able to wear the same types of clothes. This can lead to issues such as bullying, which will likely lead to a student being distracted and being disinterested in their education.
Let me tell you a story of a girl I know in British Columbia. She is from a family that isn’t very well-off, so she often wears clothes that are thrifted. However, when she was in her late teens, many of her classmates wore brand-name clothes. Since she was unable to afford those types of clothes, she was physically bullied. Her clothes were often torn badly due to the bullying, so she was unable to wear them. As a result, she had to wear her gym clothes during school. Since she was also wearing the gym uniform during Physical Education, which was her first class of the day, she sweat a lot, which meant that she had a strong body odor. She was kicked out of class due to her body odor so many times that at the end of the year, she was unable to meet the attendance policy, which meant that she would have to repeat the school year.
The Case for Uniforms
Now imagine if everyone, including this girl, had to wear the same uniform to school. If everyone was wearing the same clothes, it would be hard to tell who’s rich and who’s not. This, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the reasons why I believe that introducing uniforms in public schools is a step we need to take.
I’m sure that a few of you are probably thinking, “But uniforms restrict self-expression.” And yes, I agree with you. To a certain extent, uniforms do restrict self-expression, since students are unable to represent themselves through their clothing. However, I believe that even if students didn’t wear uniforms, they wouldn’t truly be expressing themselves. As a teenager in school myself, I know that most of the time I wear a certain outfit, it’s because I’m following whatever trends are going around, and I know that many of my peers do the same. So if we’re only dressing up to follow trends, are we really expressing ourselves anyway?
Wearing uniforms will also help us students prepare for the real world after we graduate. I’m pretty sure most workplaces have a formal or semi-formal dress code. If we’re not introduced to that at a young age, it’s going to be strange dressing that way when we’re older. Even now, even though I’m dressed formally for this tournament, it feels strange to me because I’m not used to it.
Statistics Speak Volumes
There are a few statistics that I would now like to bring to light, because I believe that they reflect on the importance of uniforms in schools. According to a news report on CNN News, 98% of students in the United Kingdom are mandated to wear uniforms. If we were to round this number, this means that almost every single student in the UK wears a school uniform. The UK also has a 93% high school completion rate, as stated by the National Centre for Education Statistics. On the other hand, only 20% of Canadian students wear school uniforms. And while there are other factors involved in our high school completion rate (which is only 77%), I believe that wearing uniforms impacted this statistic.
This data leads me to believe that wearing uniforms in school has benefits that are potentially resulting in higher high school graduation rates. This could mean that introducing uniforms to all schools could potentially also lead to more Canadian students graduating high school every year as a result of not being distracted at school.
Personal Opinion & Conclusion
I think we should add uniforms to public schools as soon as possible. It probably seems strange that I’m promoting uniforms— I mean, which normal teenager would want uniforms at school? Even though it is strange, the reason I chose to speak about this today is because I truly believe that having uniforms at my school could change the school dynamic.
In my school, I know that there are a lot of girls who pick on others due to their clothing choices. While I have thankfully not been a victim to that, I have seen others get bullied for this. If we had uniforms, the mean girls won’t be able to bully my classmates for this reason.
I also think that having uniforms would save me so much time. I live really far away from my school, and I have to catch the bus at 7:15 AM every morning. When I was younger, I used to wake up at 6:45 and I’d make it to the bus stop early, because it didn’t take me long to get ready. But now that I’m nearing the end of middle school, my classmates are starting to care a lot about their appearance, which makes me care about my appearance, resulting in me waking up before 6 AM every day, and still barely catching the bus. The only reason I wake up this early is because it’s challenging to pick out an outfit that looks good and fits into whatever trend is going around. If our school had uniforms, however, I could be getting more sleep at night, and I’d also probably be less self-conscious of my outfits.
In conclusion, today, you read about school dress codes and the benefits of introducing uniforms. The two main ideas I went over were how uniforms can decrease distractions for students in school and how they can potentially lead to more Canadian students successfully graduating from high school.
So as Nelson Mandela, a former president of South Africa, once said: “In the journey of education, let uniforms be the cloak of unity that transcends differences, and in its folds, may students find the wings to soar, undeterred by the distractions of attire.”
