🚀 go-pugleaf

J.M. Ivler wrote:

> Dale, you're tale only goes on to prove the point that started this. It's
> not about school uniforms, it is about parental responsibility. Your
> parents took responsibility and made sure that they raised you. They
> didn't expect the school system to do it for them. And it appears that you
> learned from that model as you state:
> 

Yes, the best hope for children is their parents.  But school officials
cannot control parents.  If all parents cared as much as you and I then
school officials would jump and shout for joy.  But they don't have this
wonderful situation.

Instead they have problem children who have parents in jail, or on their
way to jail.  They have girls who go home every night to being raped by
step-fathers.  Boys who stink of urine.  Public schools are not an ideal
learning environment full of well-parented kis.  

The question school board officials and principals face is "How do we
make this less-than ideal environment better"?  If school uniforms are
some help in this direction then by all means, let's try.


> You are taking the responsibility of instilling YOUR values into YOUR
> kids. That's great. What if your kids want to dress for success, but have
> been limitted to wearing some dress code that ensures that they don't
> overpower other kids with their power ties and power clothes. That they
> mold to fit some predetermined "mean". Some average from which they are
> not allowed a standard deviation.
> 

Wait a sec. If some school board somewhere is trying to make children
dress down then I have a problem here.  I thought we were discussing
making children dress better in school.   I never, never, would want
bright, intelligent, upright children to be less bright, less
intelligent, less upright, or even less well dressed.  I really don't
think that this issue is the current one being faced in the public
schools.

> Uniforms have yet to be proven to "raise the educational levels". The only
> things studies have shown is that there is less random violence in schools
> that have gang problems and institute a uniform policy, and there has also
> been a slight lowering of truancy (hard to skip school while wearing a
> uniform).
> 

Aren't these accomplishments enough to be worth the effort?  After all,
more consistent discipline and safety in schools would certainly be a
help for those kids who are trying to do well.

> Other thn that, there has been no published study that shows that grades
> got better, students studdied more or anything else. In 1985 it wasn't
> uniforms that took a barrio high school and turned it into the center of
> attention as Jamie took kids that were in gangs, and never were thought to
> have any ability and showed them that everyone was wrong, as they passed
> the AP exams for calculas. Uniforms didn't make them smarter... a teacher
> who believed in them made them willing to fail, and in that they succeeded
> beyond anyones wildest imagination.
> 

Wonderful, he taught them that joining peaceful, law-abiding,
civilization was worth the effort.  But isn't respectable dress part of
that joining.

> Garfield didn't have uniforms, but in 1990 they had more students take and
> pass the Calc AP exam than Beverly Hills. [might have been 1991...]
> 
> Teachers... Parents... Students... that's where the difference is amde...
> not in some arbituary dress code that puts kids in uniforms.

Correct, absolutely correct.  But uniforms need not necessarily be
excluded from that recipe.  

BTW, I think I understand some of the more enthusiastic proponents of
dress uniforms.  The proponents see the execrable sloppiness of some
troubled kids (baggies are a good example) and wish push the visible
indications of those children's incipient failure away.  Of course,
dress codes are only a surface answer, and do not solve the real
problems that these children have.

I have a different reason for liking the dress codes.  Some children who
have good parents, who have good reinforcement at home.  Yet in the
natural independence of teenage youth, they pick up and identify
themselves with less savoury elements of socity.  I want their
identification to have the fewest possible physical representations.
Therefore when they grow up and get some sense, they have not joined
themselves too closely to get loose.

What I do not understand, and what you may be able to help me with.  Why
is the opposition to dress codes and uniforms so intense?  What harm can
they do?

Dale