school uniform requirement :: essays research papers

It's official -- the largest school district in the U.S. has adopted school uniforms. Over a half-million elementary-school students in New York City will have to adhere to a dress code by the Fall of 1999. The president of the school board said the policy is "important to diminish peer pressure and promote school pride," but that it's not "an act of magic to transform schools overnight....It isn't going to replace good teaching, good principals, small classrooms." It's a fashion trend that's spreading. From Los Angeles to Louisiana, from Maryland to Miami, public schools are discussing, and in many cases adopting, the old private school idea. School uniforms are designed to help kids focus on algebra instead of high-tops; to make students compete for grades rather than jackets. "It helps to get up in the morning and not have to think about what you're going to wear," said Maria, a ninth-grader who swims, plays soccer, and wears exactly what everybody else does at her high school in Washington, DC. Each school day, Maria dons an all-white oxford shirt, brown shoes, and a gray/maroon plaid skirt that has to be long enough to the touch the ground when she kneels. After school and on weekends, of course, all bets are off. Maria has a simple yet effective strategy: she borrows her friends' clothes, typically baggy jeans. School uniforms also take the pressure off students to pay top dollar for clothes, according to Reginald Wilson, a senior scholar at the American Council on Education in Washington, D.C. "I think it does lower the cost of clothes, and kids don't emphasize clothes as much when they're all wearing the same thing," Wilson said. "Certainly the competition to wear the best shoes or the best sweaters and so forth has been prevalent in school ever since I was in school, and the poor kids felt inferior." Training? The 'training' argument says that when you are employed, you are likely to have to wear a uniform. Is this true? What are the odds that children will wear a uniform later in life? Typically, the occupations where people have to wear uniforms are the lower paid jobs, nothing to look forward to, really. Generally, the more educated people are, the less they wear uniforms later in life. Look at teachers, they don't wear uniforms! Well-paid work tends to reject uniformity, and for good reason, the demands of the future include qualities such as assertiveness, creativity, individuality, originality, a spontaneous personality, being a self-starter, taking initiatives, being able to cope with change, etc.