I need to make a submission to this

[mrsbrown]

http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/etc/fs_inq_dress.html

My primary comment?

Adolescence is a time for experimentation with dress and image. Schools provide safe spaces ideal for this experimentation and uniforms stultify the creativity and adventurousness of young people.

Uniforms suck.

Comments

[hnpcc]

I tend to disagree. Without uniforms you tend to end up with competitive dressing, at least if my school was anything to go by. So just another uniform, only with a higher price tag and more bitchiness.

[mrsbrown.livejournal.com]

See? that's part of the learning part of adolescence. Learning how and on what terms you want to deal with that crap.

Uniforms are a way for parents to cop out of the dialogue about self expression, fitting in with the crowd and how much it can cost teenagers to do that. They are a way to protect our teenagers from the big wide world a bit longer, but ultimately, we can't protect them forever.

Why shouldn't they work out how to deal with competitiveness and bitchyness while they have caring adults around to guide and influence them? Why shouldn't they work out that if you don't wear enough clothing to school you get cold and/or unwelcome attention.

When we put teenagers in uniform, they have to go out to clubs and the big wide world to learn what sort of image they want to present to the world. The pressure to get it "right" is greater and it's an inherently unsafe environment to advertise your innocence/lack of experience.

My teenagers (probably unusually) have been responsible for buying their own clothes/managing their clothes budget since they were about 14. They have chosen to follow their own paths and frequently buy clothes at the opshop or on sale. Mr Peacock has a very strong sense of style, but regularly balances that with what he can afford or wants to do with his money instead. MsNotAGoth gets about $10 per fortnight as my contribution to her clothing (she gets other money too, for scouts and travel expenses). She chooses how to spend this money and has developed a very personal style, which includes the fact that she'd rather go to movies with friends than buy a new bra.

At home we do have a strong antipathy to wearing clothing which is just advertising and the school Sneetch and Mr Peacock have spent most time at doesn't have a uniform, but DOES have a clothing guideline. It includes requirements such as no large pictures or obvious advertising, and no black tops for children in the primary school. Sunsmart clothing is also required.

Uniforms also cost a lot of money or look crap. The Brunswick SC uniform is cheap elasticated pants and a polo top and windcheater. It's cheapish to buy, but provides no sense of dressing stylishly or carefully. Mr Peacock nearly went nuts.

In contrast, the Melbourne Girl's College uniform is very posh. It includes a skirt and shirt, and blazer. They look great, but even buying as much as I could from the second hand uniform shop cost me about $500 plus about $150 per year to replace shirts, socks, shoes etc.

And then there's the time and effort teachers use to enforce the uniform and the educational opportunities missed while students are punished for not wearing correct uniform.

Last year, while Sneetch was hating school, he got quite lax about making sure he had the right uniform bits at the right house and frequently (if he went to school at all) failed to wear the correct polo top or pants. He was skipping school about 60% of the time and, most memorably, after skipping school for a fortnight, on a day when I had gone to a lot of effort to persuade him to get to school, he was sent home because he "wasn't wearing correct uniform". There was NO consideration of the effort he (or I) had gone to to get there. What are schools for? Education, or enforcing uniform policies? In this case, the uniform just became another hurdle for a kid having trouble getting to school to get over. How many other kids miss out on an education because their families can't get it together to dot every i and cross every t?

Adolescence is a time for establishing your identity, for trying out the ways you can be in the world, for finding out ways to make sure people acknowledge that you are different from the rest. The clothing you wear isan important part of this process, why waste the time you spend at school?

[http://users.livejournal.com/raven_/]

Yeah, I'm with you.

Also, uniforms mean that the child knows what to put on in the morning. And what has to be washed. Plus, they tend to be harder wearing than most other clothes.

[mmy-me.livejournal.com]

meh - you must have gone to a different kind of school than I did. That was _not_ a safe place to experiment. For someone like me who just did not get "it", the only adventure involved was to find out on any particular day whether I was going to get actively bullied or just shunned. I think I would have been pretty happy to have a uniform. But then I'm a product of that great social experiment known as "Sweden", so I am just permanently scarred by my whole adolescence. YMMV - obviously does.

[http://users.livejournal.com/raven_/]

I think it depends a lot on your kids, and the environment they have at home, as well.

I'm quite glad T is in a uniform. Yep, it's a cop out, but it makes it a HELL of a lot easier for us. And he does tell us when he wants or needs new clothes, and I usually go with him and/or pay for it.

I buy pretty much everything second hand for his school uniform, and he doens't have a problem with that. It's posh, but it's warm and hardwearing. If it was crap pants and a polo I'd probably have other views, but it's not, so.....

The clothing you wear isan important part of this process, why waste the time you spend at school?
But isn't school for learning? And not a fashion parade...? If he wants to do that, he has weekends. I for one don't want to waste a shiteload of money on school fees for him to be spending half the time there worry about what he, or anyone else, is wearing.

I guess there's always going to be opposing views to this debate :)

[mrsbrown.livejournal.com]

Adolescents need to learn how to deal with working out what to wear in the morning. And making fashion mistakes. And keeping their washing up to date.

You are both speaking from the point of view of the adult, not the adult-in-training.

[http://users.livejournal.com/raven_/]

That's what weekends are for.

My view, yes. And I'm quite sure it varies with the adolescent. In this one's case, no uniform = disharmony in the family and stress for all.

School is for learning, not for fashion. That's what we're paying for.

[jadeluxe.livejournal.com]

uniforms are crap.
my summer uniform was a brown dress with grey jumper. in winter we had an ugly kilt (that HAD to be purchased from fletcher jones and was really expensive).
you weren't allowed to wear the summer dress without the blazer. you could wear it without the jumper on really hot days, but you always had to wear the blazer. teachers would patrol the northcote train station looking for deviants who were just too hot in the 35-degree heat and had taken off their blazer, and gleefully issue them with detentions. horrendous behaviour. once when i was in year 8, i took off my knee socks and shoes and walked home from the tramstop barefoot. it was about 100 degrees that day and i couldn't stand to wear shoes any more. i was about 12km from the school but the vice-principal happened to drive past. detention!
worst of all, in YEAR 12, the "discipline coordinator" confiscated my second set of earrings. they were those tiny sleepers you buy from the chemist when you get your ears pierced. leading up to the confiscation, he'd follow me around the school trying to catch me out with my unacceptable and outrageous ear furniture. i'd always manage to take them off before he got there. this one particular day i wasn't quick enough. the triumph on his face as he put the two little sleepers in an envelope and wrote "not to be released to student until the end of the year" was so genuine it was sad. i was 17!! my mum rang up to complain and he said i was a ringleader for other students with my wilful disregard of uniform policy. mum was so angry she swerved her car at him at parent-teacher night, and also gave me a note to wear the sport uniform for the rest of the year due to my alleged "pitting kerotinitis", a condition which apparently pervents the wearing of stockings. so i guess i won in the end :)
i was a model student, by the way. this was my only notable "trouble" through all the years of high school. what a fucking joke. and for the record, the standard of education was appalling - because all they really cared about was how we looked.
so yes. no to uniforms.

also, i just thought of something else! until i was in year 9 and they got phased out, we also had to wear pinafores over our uniforms while we were at school! this had been a school tradition since 1904 or something. they were cotton pinafores in green, yellow or blue, depending what house you were in, and you had your first name embroidered on your chest. they were alright because in year 7 textiles, you got to sew your name on, and you could do it however you wanted. mine was electric blue chainstitch because i was crap at sewing, but some girls went all out with cross-stitch designs and fancy decals. also it was good to be able to know all the other girls' names in the school. plus it covered the ugly uniform.

hmm. perhaps i need to make a submission too :)

[mishymoocow-2.livejournal.com]

"Why shouldn't they work out how to deal with competitiveness and bitchyness while they have caring adults around to guide and influence them? " Erm... your kids' schools maybe. Not mine.

I think today when kids are suffering more with cyberbullying it's up to us to protect them more, not less. At least I went home from school and the bullies couldn't be bothered trying to find me so I was safe.

Our school had a policy of uniform for years 7-10, then relatively free dress for Yr 11/12. They worked out via experience that the seniors weren't as liable to be bitchy and persecute each other as they had more important things to worry about. There were guidelines. It made us feel very grown up and confident. The gestapo teachers could put as much venom into policing our free dress (and our very thoughts) as they could into any uniform policement.

I vividly remember half the senior teachers sticking up for me when I went to school in a white outfit with a blue scarf and a third of my face blue (a la Bowie). The VP was all for sending me home for not being in appropriate dress. And one male teacher found it way too fascinating... telling everyone that it wouldn't work on most people but with my bone structure he liked it. That provided food for entertainment for WEEKS.

Prior to that, free dress days were an unmitigated hell. A large minority of us used to 'forget' and wear our uniform... that way we only got a fine and usually lived it down within one week. Wearing our own clothes? That'd take a year.

[mr-cvb.livejournal.com]

Ya, ve vink das uniform ist wundabar! Some boots and a nice black jacket unt de kinder are ready for the day! Ya?

Herr Mr. C
Who still wears a 'uniform' to work, but at least gets to chose his own tie...8)

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

I remember being an adult-in-training and not having the view you espouse. There is no one view you can assume on the basis of age.

Dress was a way of enforcing group heirachies and social status. I was terrified of non-uniform days. Schools do not provide safe space for experimentation. Caring adults? Adolescence is a time when caring adults can't help you. Getting past the caring adults is simply a challenge for a lot of kids who want to excercise power and enforce their own group norms.

I appreciate you've had specific crappy experiences, but I don't think you can generalise from those. Perhaps no more than I can, anyway. Especially since your experience and your childrens' experiences are unusual.

[teffania.livejournal.com]

I'm definately in the non-uniform = persecution camp. 13 year old girls are real bitches. I didn't need the uniform to protect me from the world, I needed it to protect me from school. (I could explore dress fine in the relatively supportive atmosphere of after school activities which were never were so bitchy). I still haven't learnt how to deal with bitchy 13 year olds, but the point is that I don't have to, I just had to wait long enough for them to grow up to the level of maturity I had at 13. The bitchiest adult cliques I've seen have nothing on 13 year olds, and whole schools based on social hierachies.

Buisness suits are uniforms too. They are a compromise to show a little of your personality, but not too much. My school's uniform policy was policed in a relaxed manner, and the uniform sensible (moderate cost, no blazer, hard wearing, multiple options - eg polo shirt or shirt, pants, dress, shorts, skirt) so there was plenty of room to make small personalisations to the outfit. We also didn't have a winter to summer cutoff date, or any rules about layers, so could make decisions about dress to suit the weather. To me this represents something similar to what the buisness person faces each morning - some decisions but not too many - and as such is an ideal learning activity - some free choice but not so many as to be confusing. Oh and I think the customary punishment for being out of uniform without an excuse (of which a wider variety were accepted) was a small lunchtime detention, not being sent home - " appropriate enforcement and sanctions" is one of their terms of reference that perhaps you should most write about.

Uniforms only cover 5 days a week. The other 2 are plenty of time to learn to dress independantly. I had a clothing allowance and chose pretty much all my own non-school clothes by 12*, (even when free dressmaking was offered, I chose the patterns and fabrics) and by 14 was definately making decisions about buying the cheaper item or saving up general pocket money to buy the nicer item. And on weekends and after school I was dealing with the real world, not he insular world of the school. In the insular world of the school I wouldn't have been able to analyse the effects of wearing a low cut top on the boys - they were bad enough with shapeless shirts - not on any scale of reality.

*10-14 was the height of my tomboy period. Much contrast to now when I count the number of times i wear pants (not skirt) in a year on a hand, but a deliberate fashion choice at the time. I loved designing/choosing party outfits even then (mmm, that silk shirt I had), and i think I was lucky I didn't have to wear that stuff in front of my school mates. It would have taken years to find the confidence to find my own sense of style again after they had finished with me.