Saturday, May 16, 2009
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- Parents Coalition For School Education
- Our Motto Rising to a higher standard Our Mission Statement We as parents of children in the Caldwell school district unite together to make sure that our children receive the best education standards of intellectual and personal development through a caring, respectful, multicultural environment, we as parents are committed to instilling in each child a desire to learn, to make appropriate risks, and to accept challenges. The school community is committed to developing children who are equipped with the knowledge, skills, and disposition to continue their education and become personally fulfilled, interdependent, socially responsible adults.
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May
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- Committee request for input by parents
- Thrusday 21st 7am Committee Meeting
- Communication with the public Policy
- Candidates Interviewed by the Press Tribune
- Information about The Levy we are voting on tomorrow
- Here is a proposal that one school did to get thie...
- Manuel on School Uniforms
- Rachels Challenge as part of implementing a strict...
- Elementary School Uniforms have style
- Public School Uniforms: Empirical vs. Anecdotal Ev...
- Check out this blog post on April Showers
- A Mixed Bag of Uniform Research
- Scientific School Uniform Research
- Evidence for School Uniform Policies in US Seen as...
- Uniform Proposal as discussed by Uniform Committees
- Caldwell School District Proposes Unifroms
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May
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Though these are not my own thoughts I agree with them. I found this on a yahoo group
ReplyDeletehttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/woodburnschooluniform/message/3 check it out
Many people oppose school uniforms because they claim that it stifles
creativity and individualism. I however, mainly oppose school
uniforms because uniforms reek of subtle racism. If you examine the
last twenty years of the history of public school uniforms, most of
the early adopters were in predominately African-American schools.
What the schools were really trying to quash was the urban hip-hop
style of dress. Sure discipline and academic success went up in these
schools, but the uniforms were used in conjunction with other major
changes in school policy to help turn the school around.
Beyond a policy that I believe stems from racism here are some other
things you might consider which have nothing to do with race.
The argument that majority-rule trumps freedom-of-choice is so often
bandied about that we often forget how poor a guide majority-rule is.
Let's say that a good, honest, and scientific poll (the kind we
rarely see in public policy debates) showed that 55 percent of
students would be fine with school uniforms, is that a good
justification for implementing them? Of course not, simple majority
rule is about the crudest yardstick imaginable and certainly not
something to hang policy on. The chances are good that those 55
percent of students aren't greatly affected by the dress code, they
dress like that anyway. All the poll is saying is "55 percent of the
students wouldn't mind if the other 45 percent of students are forced
to dress like them", is that any kind of justification? Additionally,
polls can be deliberately skewed, in my poll example are the 55
percent actually in favor of a dress code or are they just not opposed
to it? There is a huge difference.
The main reason that such a poll is useless is because majority rule
is tragically flawed, it doesn't account for the strength of a
person's convictions. Let's say we took a poll to decide if we should
have a national religion and 98 percent said that they wanted to be
Catholics, should we ignore the (presumably) vehement opposition of
the 2 percent and make Catholicism the national religion because,
"hey, majority rules"? No, it would be silly to, nor should we let
the, in all likelihood mild, preference of a slight majority outweigh
the strong preference of the minority. How do I know that the
preference of the majority is probably mild? Because it seems very
unlikely that many students have strong feelings about forcing their
peers to dress like them. Why do I think that the minority feels
strongly against a dress code? Actually, probably most of them don't,
certainly not the full 45 percent used in the example, but the simple
reality is that it takes a strong conviction to dress differently from
your peers. Dressing Emo, hip-hop, punk, or goth in a school full of
oxfords isn't easy and anyone doing so must really want to dress that way.
Many schools have what they call "choice" which really isn't choice at
all. They say something like "You can wear 5 different colors of
oxfords, three different pants, girls can wear navy skirts." Is that
really a choice at all? It sounds like what the fascist Henry Ford
once said "Any color you want, as long as it's black", only now its
"Dress any way you want as long as it looks like The Gap." They don't
really give you any options, you must select from a very limited menu
of approved "choices".
Another crazy argument in favor of school uniforms is the supposed
saving and reduced peer pressure on kids now that they don't have to
spend money on the latest fashions. On the financial side it usually
goes something like this: If children didn't demand going to
department stores, and wearing name brand clothing, which costs
hundreds of dollars, then they could go instead to Wal-Mart and buy $8
shirts and pants and save those hundreds of dollars.
There are two problems with this argument. First, the hottest place
to buy clothes currently is at Steve and Barry's whose prices make
Wal-Mart look expensive and traditionally a lot of people dressing out
of the mainstream shop outside the mainstream, goodwill, flea markets,
outlet stores, etc. Given this shopping propensity it could be argued
that a dress code is just as likely to drive costs up as it is to
drive costs down.
Second, and more importantly, the purported savings on clothes are
false. Unless the student is currently dressing within the dress code
he or she is forced to by new clothes. Even at $12.50 per item you
are looking at $25 per two piece outfit and figuring at least one
outfit for every day of the school week you are looking at $125. And
that's a very conservative number, chances are most students would by
at least twice those amounts to avoid the "It must be Tuesday because
Todd is wearing his blue oxford and khaki pants" syndrome. If you
start talking about seasonal wear add a few hundred more to the $250
you already spent on two weeks of clothing, so maybe $350 - 450 minimum.
Now, maybe your thinking, "hey, what's the big deal, the students have
to buy cloths anyway so it doesn't really cost anything extra", but
you'd be wrong. Implicit in the idea behind a dress code is that the
students don't already dress this way (hence the need for a dress
code) and also that the students won't chose to dress this way outside
of school (see above plus simple logic). So really we're talking
about a complete second wardrobe just for school use, not exactly a
savings by any measure.
Unfortunately, the true cost is even higher, without a dress code
students can amortize the costs of clothes not only during the school
day, but all day and the weekend.
For example the typical school day is a little over 7 hours, five days
a week, so approximately 40 hours of school clothes use per week
factoring in transit time. Figuring in an 8:00 bedtime there are 20
non-school hours during the week, getting up at 9:00 and going to bed
at 8:00 on weekends adds another 22 hours. Therefore without a dress
code clothes are amortized over roughly twice the amount of time,
meaning that the true cost of the dress code cloths is twice as high
($700 in this example), You could argue that some costs aren't
captured in this scenario, like "With students wearing dress code
clothes half the time, their regular cloth will last twice as long"
But since most of the wear and tear on clothes is actually in the
laundering, and the fact that under either premise the clothes have to
be laundered the same amount, this probably isn't significant. Also,
if one wanted to be picky and capture all of the costs of a dress code
or lack of dress code, I think that twice as much laundry under a
dress code would be a pretty significant factor, especially to the
person doing the laundry.
As for dress codes reducing peer pressure and ridicule, all it does is
move it around. Unless the dress code states that not only must the
shirt be a certain color but it must be purchased in a specific place
there really isn't any reduction in peer pressure. The rich kids can
still make fun of the poor kids because the rich kids are wearing $70
department store polo shirts and the poor kids are wearing $7 Wal-mart
polo shirts. For a dress code to truly work everyone must be on the
same playing field. "Only Wal-mart clothing" should be the rational
dress code supporters mantra.
One last question to ask is where do we want to stop? If there is
really a benefit to the conformity of school uniforms why not regulate
hair style? How about buzz cuts for boys and shoulder length hair for
girls, no longer, no shorter. This will blur the socio-economic line
between those students whose parents can pay for a salon cut and those
who parents have to give their children a "bowl" cut. Everyone would
be the same, no ridicule for having their hair styled or not styled.
Of course everyone should have there hair cut at the same place, just
to be fair. It all seems like a very slippery slope.