Uniform - Pros and Cons

There has been much debate over if uniforms are good for students or not. The uniform policies in different schools while they vary in colors and styles are not very effective unless properly enforced. Uniforms can however have different impacts on bullying, cost, and education.

One of the reasons that schools started uniforms was to limit bullying and to help people be more including of others. However, there is still a lot of bullying. Uniforms do not make it to where people can not identify who has money and who does not. A lot of students are bullied due to either having money and being spoiled or either not having money. You can typically tell who has money because of the brands they wear, whether it be their shirt brand or their shoes. Having a uniform can actually make bullying worse in some cases.

Another reason uniforms were put into motion is that it was supposed to make it easier to afford for the people without much money. The cost of uniforms is not cheaper than just buying clothes, because you have to purchase them in addition to the clothes people already have. Plus the fact that uniforms cost more than the cost of just buying your everyday clothes, like the people living on budgets were probably shopping for clothes at walmart or somewhere similar are now having to purchase $60 skirts. A low income family will have to save their money just to purchase the items for the school year.

The final reason school boards thought uniform would be a positive thing is the benefits it would have on a child's education. Just because you force the children to wear similar things does not mean that they are going to pay more attention to school. If a student does not want to dedicate their time and energy toward their education, then having a uniform is not going to make them do so. Just telling the students that there is a uniform is not going to bring test scores up, the teachers should be there working and helping because they want to not because they just need a job. Uniforms do not make it to where the students will not get distracted by gossiping and judging their classmates, people find other things to talk about other then their clothing choices.

In conclusion, I would be all for having a uniform if it were properly enforced, like they stuck with their uniform code. However I also think that uniforms need to be more strict if they're going to have them, like they should make everyone order the same shirts from the same place and have a specific type of shoe for everyone to wear, along with having to order your skirts and pants from the same place. So while it may not currently be a good system I believe that there is a way to fix it and make it a better system in the future.