Freshly ironed white collared button-down shirts, neatly pressed black slacks, dress shoes that would make your grandma proud, and for the boys--a tie. If you thought that was the uniform at the nearest high-class restaurant, you’re wrong.
That’s the uniform I have to wear until I graduate. Some might call uniforms professional. They might say they increase attendance.
Something they haven’t thought of? Uniforms are expensive and they limit self expression.
Ever since I was a child, my mother struggled with saving enough money for my uniform clothes that met the criteria for my school. Now that I’m in high school, the price has gone up more than a couple bucks. Detroit Cristo Rey High School expects students to come to school dressed in nicely ironed-pure white button-down shirts.
These can be very hard to find for young men and especially young women. In women's fashion, it’s difficult to find button-downs that cover cleavage area. We have to either wear a t-shirt under that reaches to our neck or look harder for a shirt that meets our schools credentials, which costs more.
For both young men and women, prices are out the roof. The University of Florida released a study showing that the annual cost of uniforms in the U.S. last year was $1,300,000,000. For students at Cristo Rey, the prices can range from $28 to $50, for just one shirt.
All that money, for a shirt that will turn a dingy-yellowish color if it's not washed properly?
What. A. Waste.
However, some believe uniform has a more positive impact on their students. When students have a uniform they don’t have much of a choice of what to wear. They are all wearing the same thing.
Schools try so hard to advertise that uniforms will improve school behavior but David Brunsma, a sociology associate professor at the University of Missouri wrote a book about school uniforms in 2004. He called uniforms a "symbolic crusade,” claiming that uniforms have no impact on school safety or unity or learning.
Even so, we send our students to the best schools that thrive on diversity and the motto, “be yourself.” Yet, schools contradict themselves when they force students to wear the same colors everyday.
I love learning and going to school, but I dread getting up every morning and putting on my uniform. Picturing myself in that horrid piece of clothing I have to wear until graduation almost makes me feel trapped.
Whether it be a white collared button-up with black slacks or navy polo with khakis or the school colors we have to wear, our schools just don’t understand.
Uniforms deprive the students of individuality. Where is self expression when we’re trapped in clothes, in colors, that do not allow us to be ourselves?
Don’t get me wrong, uniforms look great--if you’re trying to produce teenage robots who will try to take over the world.
Schools need to realize, uniforms aren’t for everyone. Students need to be able to express who they are and just be kids. Uniforms restrict them from doing just that. How are they going to grow up and be independent adults when they don’t have the liberty to simply choose what to wear?
