posted
In my school, we had a bunch of students who were very wealthy- one person had a tennis court, swimming pool, trampoline and basketball court in her backyard. Whereas my father was a warehouseman and we barely scraped by. I always liked the idea of uniforms, but even without clothing, it would not be hard to tell people's money situation- my friends drove their brand new fancy cars to school, carried around palm pilots and even had debutante parties. And of course, when you went to their houses to study and thought, wow, her guest house is bigger then mine, that was a pretty good indicator of wealth.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Jamio: Those of you who wore uniforms in school, couldn't you tell how affluent a person was by how their hair was done?
Not usually, no. Most of us wore ponytails.
Yeah. Also there were rules: no hair dye, anything longer than shoulder length always tied back.
There were always ways of knowing how affluent other families were: the cars picking girls up was a big one.
But overall, I found school uniforms took the focus away from fashion at school: everyone looked the same (which was, to be honest, slightly daggy - it was not the most flattering uniform) and so there was no point commenting on/pointing out appearance.
100% agreed. (Except I would never use the word "daggy". )
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote: The vague overview of the concept is "uniforms create more student-body cohesion" and/or "uniforms create an environment which inspire more cooperation and professionalism on the part of the student," and stuff like that.
Thanks for the info, Samp. We went out for the evening.
I'm still flabbergasted by this. I suppose it fills some kind of Maslowian need for acceptance? Or when looking at the data, does it tend to push the people who don't fit out of the school? (That could explain the rise in expulsions in the control schools if the trouble makers transfer to avoid the uniforms.)
Like I said before, I'm glad it works for some people. But it absolutely would not have worked for me, and I doubt I'm alone in that. I just hope districts keep that in mind when coming up with their rules so people like myself aren't pushed out of the system.
Or heck, maybe we should be. Maybe it's the ultimate expression that we just don't feel comfortable in that environment and we should be elsewhere. Maybe it'd ultimately be good for students like me who got by but hated it.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
So I went looking through google scholar for a few hours.
Maybe I'm wrong in this, but it appears samp is overstating his case by a LOT based on the available evidence. And there isn't ANYTHING I could find that suggested overall improvements in learning (some stuff shows decreases in learning). Without that, I think the arguments for school uniforms are DOA. School is for learning, its the towering purpose of schools, everything else is tertiary.
What it looks like is uniforms make it easier for administrators to discipline. Its not the uniform, its discipline, that improves attendance rates. So find other ways to improve discipline that doesn't involve forcing people to dress a certain way. You'll get exactly the same results uniforms give you.
Maybe I'm missing a lot of the evidence samp is talking about. But from what I could find in a few hours, he's exaggerating the effects of uniforms. And now I'm going to rely on him to point to specific studies that back his claims in a stronger fashion than, for example, the ohio urban schools study. WHich is a shaky study at best, at is the strongest study to support his position.
From where I'm sitting, its the uniform supporters who have the burden of proof. I say that not because it goes against the status quo, but because uniforms in school IS a restriction on freedom of students. And I think any such restriction requires strong evidence that it will serve a strong purpose.
[ June 22, 2009, 05:51 AM: Message edited by: Paul Goldner ]
Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Belle: Really is there all that much disparity in income levels between kids in the same school district? Most of the schools around here are pretty well segregated by socioeconomic status. A few schools might be mostly low-middle class with a few kids who live in pricey subdivisions on the edge of town...but rarely do you see the rich going to school with the poor.
My kid's school is pretty diverse, but it's unusual. It's a semi-rural area with some families who've lived out here for generations on family farm land and are land rich but cash poor and then there are people like us who moved in within the last ten years and are solid middle class.
I just saw this, but around here when I was in high school we had something called Schools of Choice, which allowed a parent to send their kid to any school in the tri-county area (originally just Oakland county, then expanded to include much less affluent Wayne and Macomb). The income disparity between the kids being bussed to our schools and the kids who live here was dramatic. We did it because declining populations meant less state aid, and we got more per pupil and we had tons of extra space in our classrooms. And they came because we have incredible schools here.
But picking out who was one of those kids and who was local was extremely easy. Well, that's not really fair, they were all black and we were all white, so clothes wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference, to say nothing of the language differences between urban and suburban English. I don't think school uniforms would have made a bit of difference. As it was, some of the kids who were bussed in ended up being some of the more popular kids in the school, and the ones that weren't, weren't because they were poorer, it was because they were annoying as all hell and liked to scream at each other across hallways.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I guess this may be a regional thing...in the schools I've worked in getting my teaching degree, things are pretty homogenized. Yes, there are some differences, but they are slight. Everyone who goes to a certain school around here is pretty much the same class...with some exceptions, of course.
That doesn't mean that kids won't find a way to separate themselves anyway, and you get people who claim pride in living in one particular subdivision over another one even if the average cost of a home in both subdivision is the same.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
All the schools I went to weren't divided by money at all. They were divided by interests. There were the cool people, with the hair and the makeup and the clothes, but they weren't necessarily richer or poorer. They had cars... or not. There were the geeky people, and they cared less about clothes and hair and such and they may have had cars but it mattered less. Perhaps the cool people were worried about how much income they had but the rest of us weren't.
Now, the area is pretty homogeneous and entirely middle class but there's definitely people who are very wealthy to people who are middle class but poorer. But I think it might be because the wealthy people aren't necessarily conspicuously wealthy. If the kids had cars they weren't flashy cars. Nobody was wearing diamonds or carrying Prada (at least that I was aware of-- we certainly never talked about it). All those kids, I presume, went to private school.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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