Opposing School Uniforms: A Concerned Parents Plea

My son Truman attends Topeka West; the most recent conflict coming up is school uniforms. I am writing you as to hopefully change your mind and keep our dress code. When you force teenagers to do anything it just creates unneeded drama. School uniforms are an unnecessary expense for parents. Also this decision would completely dissolve Topeka west’s mission, to create productive members of society, when you force a child to wear a uniform you are crushing their individuality. When children lack ways of getting attention or expressing themselves in positive ways they will turn to more drastic measures to get it.

Also when you make people wear uniforms you make them uniform, you make them bland you take the social aspect of school away which is arguably just as the education aspect of schools. Public schools are a melting pot just like the U.S.A. when you take away the diversity you take away people’s emotions and make them not care.

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You take away a very important part of a person, their creativity, which is already dying. How are we supposed to have future generation of revolutionaries or activists or great thinkers when you make everyone think like the dying breed? This generation is doing a lot of new things and if you stop that we will continue how we are and those who don’t adapt die. What makes humans so resilient so dominant is our ability to adapt take that away and what do we have left.

I strongly believe that we should not have school uniforms.

This issue goes beyond just a problem for me with acquiring it, but also what about the wear and tear children put on clothes with a ten dollar shirt this is no problem but a 100 dollar polo shirt the care for it would be a ridiculous expense of both my time and my money in fact many agree that they “are an undue burden on the poor, including many minority families.” (Scholastic, Dress for success). With just a dress code we can avoid this and spend our money on educational expenses. If we keep just a dress code children will still feel like an individual, still feel positive about who they are. If we keep just a dress code students and parents also wouldn’t have to pay for and take care of these uniforms. On top of that “a uniform dress code creates resentment and conflicts with the administration, leading to an erosion of discipline.” (Scholastic, Dress for success).

Some may say that uniforms would help rid schools of bullying but this is high school in the 21st century kids aren’t bullied for what they wear, and even if they were this is too much work to get rid of just a single category of bullying. Some also say that this would help students feel equal, that not only would not work but if it did it would be a negative not a positive. Another belief by some is that they “contribute to lower rates of substance abuse and gang activity” (Scholastic, Dress for success) but what a student wears at school does not affect what they do once they get home or go out. When you make a child feel equal with everyone else they do not feel good about who they are since everyone else is the same. A lot of people state “eliminate a source of distraction…” (Scholastic, Dress for success), however clothing is not a big distraction in schools.

I think you will find many experts and the majority of students and parents will also feel this way. We have made a lot of process in the name of education without uniforms and we can continue to do so. If it isn’t broken why fix it?

If we do not spend all our time and money on the issue of school uniforms we can spend on worrying about other issues that are more important such as the quality of our children’s education. Brunsma and Rockquemore both agreed that “students wearing uniforms did not appear to have any significantly different academic preparedness, pro-school attitudes, or peer group structures with pro-school attitudes than other students” (Journal of educational research).