I think the gender issue is a huge one in uniform. Girl's uniforms often encode pretty retrograde expectations - particularly in secondary schools, where wearing a skirt and flat ballet pump style shoes actively discourages physical activity in the playground.
Thanks again, David. When I was teaching internationally, our senior classes were free to wear casual dress. Our students consistently achieved in the top ten graduating cohorts in Asia (not just China). It was great having one less thing to enforce and it worked wonders for teacher-student relationships.
Uniform is something I loathed while at school (slightly, though not entirely, irrationally), even after I and a friend raised a petition and went to the head and then the governors to get trousers allowed for girls. I still struggle to be convinced by arguments other than the ‘easier security’ one (though there’s an obvious way round that for the determined).
In home ed, of course, uniform is not a thing, and children vary from not caring at all about what they wear, to a clearly defined fashion sense, with everything in between (including, for mine at least, a phase of dressing up in school uniforms they found in charity shops or Aldi) - and I’ve never once seen it be an issue. It also wasn’t a thing in my primary school in the 80s which didn’t have a uniform. There were plenty of comments about minor aspects around the edges of uniform in secondary, though. I wonder if in fact we focus *more* attention on differences in clothing by allowing the expression of it to be so limited.
I think the gender issue is a huge one in uniform. Girl's uniforms often encode pretty retrograde expectations - particularly in secondary schools, where wearing a skirt and flat ballet pump style shoes actively discourages physical activity in the playground.
Thanks again, David. When I was teaching internationally, our senior classes were free to wear casual dress. Our students consistently achieved in the top ten graduating cohorts in Asia (not just China). It was great having one less thing to enforce and it worked wonders for teacher-student relationships.
Seen this and keep wondering what happened to David’s orange period …
The expert in this field is Laura.
Find her piece about the yellow jackets and why
Uniform is something I loathed while at school (slightly, though not entirely, irrationally), even after I and a friend raised a petition and went to the head and then the governors to get trousers allowed for girls. I still struggle to be convinced by arguments other than the ‘easier security’ one (though there’s an obvious way round that for the determined).
In home ed, of course, uniform is not a thing, and children vary from not caring at all about what they wear, to a clearly defined fashion sense, with everything in between (including, for mine at least, a phase of dressing up in school uniforms they found in charity shops or Aldi) - and I’ve never once seen it be an issue. It also wasn’t a thing in my primary school in the 80s which didn’t have a uniform. There were plenty of comments about minor aspects around the edges of uniform in secondary, though. I wonder if in fact we focus *more* attention on differences in clothing by allowing the expression of it to be so limited.
Good this, thanks.
An excellent, genuinely balanced article. I've only ever worked in one school with no uniform. It was nice, softer. Nobody died.