Uniform
There is something about the word “uniform” which is simply filled with negative connotations. The answer is quite clearly that uniform means everything is the same. There is no independent thought, no creativity, just bland conformity. So why is it that the concept of uniform is giving me so much trouble on a bright Saturday morning, with the joyful haze of that Tuesday-Wednesday All Nighter for the US midterms still gripping my consciousness? Well, there’s only one way to find out…
In the UK, almost all school children wear a uniform. The idea is simple: that there is a certain “our school” way, that everyone is united in some manner. It also makes it very easy for people to complain, and the usual “you are representing our school” derives from it. In theory, these are generally good things. They encourage a sense of belonging, something which is rather lacking in society today. However, where school is involved, all of these ideals tend to be filled with a certain sense of naffness. I’m sure everyone can remember a school assembly in which the entire school was berated because of the activities of the usual minority who give everyone a bad name. After those we’d be given a lecture in all of the previous concepts about representing the school. No one ever listened, and no one really cared.
Everyone just hated the uniform. No one wanted to wear it, simply because a) it’s terribly uncomfortable and b) it made you stick out like a sore thumb. When the usual inter-school rivalries set in, the pupils of Our Lady of Religious School would often do anything they could to avoid the Evil and Wicked children (so the rumours said on the playground) of Inner City Comprehensive. At that age, if these concepts of belonging and representation work, then they only do so on the sub-conscious level. Otherwise, you spend all your time trying to evade the “benefits”, sometimes trying to express your individuality, which then gets you into trouble. On the conscious level, they are a failure. They actively encourage rivalry between children who otherwise would have no quarrel with each other.
To me, uniforms are a representation of something more sinister in society. The only possible benefit they have is that they remove the idea of a fashion war happening in schools. This is something I can’t deny, and I would have difficulty devising another system that escapes this. I hate the idea that a child from a poor family may have to suffer because they can’t afford to buy the best trainers on the market, while Rich Child with Inherited Wealth can.
But everyone remembers the moment in which they never had to wear their school uniform again. The shackles of conformity were broken; at long last, the freedom to wear whatever you choose.
Then, suddenly, you start in the world of work.
And then you discover that, in fact, uniform is still alive and well. Women have a little more flexibility. But men don’t. It’s either a suit, or… a suit without a tie.
Oh dear. It then dawns on you that, in fact, you haven’t left the manacles of conformity behind at all. Indeed, it was just a temporary slipping of the noose while the hangman adjusted his line. Worse, whereas before your parents ironed your uniform for you, now you have to iron a perfect crease in your trousers and take a terribly long length of time ironing your shirt. Then you have a suit jacket which needs dry cleaning every now and then. Oh, the extra effort and expense!
Then you ask yourself the question: why? Why the hell is it like this? Why do we trust the man in a suit more than the man in a tracksuit? Is there a proper reason other than the fact “it’s always been that way”? Isn’t the man in the suit just as likely to want to screw you over – in business terms – than the man in the tracksuit? Why does a suit give an impression of professionalism? Why does a strip of silk, or even polyester, around one’s neck give the idea that this person is someone who you can trust, and then, in all probability, stab you in the back at the first opportunity to enhance their career over you?
So we conform. We go back to our uniform days and relive them, again and again, until retirement. There are only a few lucky careers which don’t require people to conform to some kind of dress code. In many ways, it’s very similar to the argument we’ve been seeing this week over whether Jon Snow is right to receive the indignant protestations of the Poppy Fascists. Why are people so hell-bent on forcing their regimented ideals on each other?
I have always been of the opinion that just because something has always been done, that alone is not enough to justify it continuing to be done. Everything needs to prove itself in the here and now. If people’s opinions are dated back to the Victorian age, when Rich Businessman wore a black-tie suit and so was the right kind to mix with instead of the povvos in the slums, then they have no place in today’s society. And not just because any old, or even young, fraudster can now buy a cheap suit in Matalan…
Therein lies the problem. So many people, holding so many stereotypical values, socialised, even indoctrinated, upon them by a so-called tolerant society. It may not seem like a serious issue, talking about why we wear uniforms, but it’s only when you examine the subtle prejudices and assumptions that lie within – only when you scratch the surface – do you discover some very revealing, and equally fascinating, aspects of human psychology. The undercurrents of the argument run throughout many layers of society; and all emanating via an issue which I doubt very few people ever even consider.
So next time you stand there making a choice between the stripey tie, the dotted tie or the Father Christmas, all singing, all dancing, novelty tie… ask yourself: is this what expressing your individuality, your independence as a person, has come to?
Is that what we call freedom?
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It’s a big question, so one can’t give a comprehensive answer. But one aspect has got to be that to simply say conforming is always wrong and “expressing yourself” is always the highest good is a bit facile.
If I’m hiring a lawyer, I don’t care about how much of an individual they are or what they’re tastes are. I want one who will do a professional job in line with the ethos of their profession – so it will give me confidence in them if they “look like a lawyer” – ie if they dress in a way which indicates they are more interested in their job than their clothes. This is particularly apposite in the case of barristers and judges, who in a very real sense are there as representatives of a system rather than as individuals…
In the same way any uniform, for work or school, helps you to focus on “the job of work” to be done. And this accounts for the corresponding sense of release when you can take your uniform off.
The mention of Jon Snow is v appropriate, but maybe you should have turned it around; why is it that people like him, and seemingly you too, feel automatically uncomfortable with any communal expression?
It is a good thing to hold yourself apart from the mob – but it is surely very silly to confuse that with refusing to join in with ANYTHING at all which might ask you to acknowledge that there is something greater than yourself, such as a national expression of thanks and remembrance.
Or in this case is it NATIONAL element rather than the collective that spooks you?
Since leaving school I’ve worked in Tesco’s (Jacket and tie, corporate colours) in a call centre (Shirt and tie – Why? I’m on the end of a phone for fucks sake) As a postman (Some point to this. Some guy comes knocking on your door asking for a signature or some money coz the stamp fell off, it helps if they look like what they’re supposed to be, and makes it less convenient for a conman to rip off the general public) And as a meter reader (ditto)
But I never enjoyed it. I’d rather be a scruffy bugger.
Now I’m fortunate enough to be in a career where more latitude is permitted. I’m my own boss, and I teach people how to drive. And I wear what the hell I like.
But to me it’s something bigger than just the uniform. Just working for a company gives them the right to tell you when to work, how to work, how you must appear while working for them, and even to some degree how you should behave outside of those hours. See for example random drug testing at work. I had to undergo such things as a meter reader, and as far as I’m aware, they are becoming more pervasive. I note also a recent proposal to introduce random drug testing in schools. – Just one more preparation for working life?
Anyway. I’m self employed, and struggling to earn as much as I did as a paid empoloyee, but you know what? I hope I never have to work in an office, or a factory, or for anybody else ever again.
Erm, can a D.O.M. comment?
I LIKE 18-year old schoolgirls in uniform (temporarily)!
Hum. I have a problem with companies doing random drug testing, unless there is a clear health & safety reason why you need to be intoxicant free ie. heavy machinery operator. I don’t have a problem with uniforms though, because to me they are like overalls – you throw them on for work and it means you don’t have to go through all the complex decisions about how you are going to signal to the outside world what you are and who you are.
Because clothes and how you wear them are social signifiers, like it or not. Just because you aren’t wearing a uniform doesn’t mean that people aren’t forming opinions about you…
…and I don’t see how we can get round that, since we are a visual species. Chucking on a black trouser suit to work in an office used to liberate me from the daily fashion parade and stopped people checking out my figure/cleavage/legs so I could just get on with the meetings. Coming home and putting on a tracksuit & slippers or a frock meant I was in ‘me’ time, and I enjoyed the change over. Sometimes what looks like ‘conformity’ is just pragmatism. And blending in, from a clothes point of view, means if people notice you, they notice you for who you are and what you do, not because of what you wear. ( Same argument as for the hijab I notice).
Now that I work from home my uniform is jeans/skirts and sloppy jumpers. Every single day. I quite miss my suits.
So wear a suit. No-one’s stopping you.
Except they don’t. Kids are very inventive when it comes to group identification, and are quite capable of coming up with alternatives that most adults won’t even notice. Unless you’re proposing something along the lines of a Victorian prison uniform, and the confiscation of all non-essential items (iPods, phones, etc), and the madatory use of school-issued items for the essential items… If the only means available to express group identity is whether you’ve got a Bic pen or a fancy pen, then that’s what they’ll use.
Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform, don’t kid yourself!
Dunc – you’re absolutely right. I did use the word “possibly” because I’m more than aware of the fact that a uniform didn’t stop everyone in my school discussing whether their shoes were £150 Rockports or £10 ASDAs.
And of course I’m not proposing making uniform more restrictive. I can just see the problem being a lot worse without uniforms. I genuinely don’t know what the answer is.
All I know is that symptomatic within what is apparently quite an innocuous issue is the hidden prejudices engrained within a society: judging people purely on how they look, simply because that is the way we have been “taught”/socialised all our lives. If you like, it could be a metaphor for almost any kind of discrimination.
But everyone remembers the moment in which they never had to wear their school uniform again
No, m’dear – some of us went to crap Glasgow comprehensives and have no such memory of such liberation. So you didn’t like wearing school uniform? Isn’t it time you got over this?
The only possible benefit they have is that they remove the idea of a fashion war happening in schools.
Other possibile benefits:
a) pupils leaving school kick a pupil from another school unconscious. How to identify the assailants? Uniform a bit of a give-away here.
b) Teacher works in school with a pupil population of 2000+. How to identify if some miscreant causing trouble is actually someone we’re paid to tolerate or someone else whose presence the police should be notified of? Again, uniform helpful here.
c) There’s a thin line between civilisation and a Lord of the Flies situation. Holding the line does not depend, as complete idiots like Blair seem to think, on the charisma of the teacher (‘everyone remembers a good teacher’) but on the recognition of the teacher as an administrator of the rules, always assuming a school has any – which is a big assumption these days. Uniform not essential here but helpful since it allows said teacher to establish him/herself as this.
d) Doesn’t just eliminate fashion war but helps ameliorate actual war. Given the freedom, pupils don’t ‘express themselves’ or any of that hippy crap; they express their belonging to other groups. Some of these groups are rather violent. Having a uniform can therefore pre-empt some of these problems.
Actually I’m a uniform agnostic – sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t – but it shows an extraordinary lack of imagination on your part if the only thing you can think about is how much you disliked it when you were at school and how the only plausible benefit is the elimination of kids competing in the wearing of designer clothes.
I have to say, since I started blogging, I’ve been struck by how many went to schools that were either private or grammar – and the more hard left they are, the more likely this is. Well, bully for them. You one of them, by any chance?
Uniforms – yes, what could be more sinister?
since I started blogging, I’ve been struck by how many went to schools that were either private or grammar – and the more hard left they are, the more likely this is. Well, bully for them. You one of them, by any chance?
That’s unfair. Firstly, it’s hardly surprising that a pastime at the cusp of media technology and journalism (both dominated by people with a class advantage) should be disproportionately populated with grammar and private school boys (for it’s mnostly boys). That’s hardly Eddie’s fault, whether he’s in that category or not.
Secondly, what’s the salience here? I did go to a selective school oop north, but tend to agree completely with the points you just made about uniform. Your analysis is overly deterministic.
One could also add that you have an advantage in discussing the practical benefits of uniform, being a teacher n’all. Eddie, however, is doubtless rather closer to being a pupil than either of us, so his perspective is to be respected.
As it happens, I did not go to a selective or grammar school. I was about to ask why this is relevant, but you have already made the point for me, Donald. Thanks.
I didn’t like wearing school uniform, as I’m sure you’ve already worked out. The sentence you quoted, Shuggy, is very flippant. Of course I was glad to be out of it, but just for the sake of a more interesting article, one always likes to exaggerate.
I’d like to deal with your other benefits:
a) This argument, taken to its logical conclusion, is a justification for the barcoding of every citizen.
b) I’ve no doubt it’s useful in a situation like that.
c) You undermine your own point – it’s quite clear that uniform is not a necessary part in an authority relationship. It may help in situations where there is already a preconceived notion that uniform denotes authority – e.g. police uniform… but that was the crux of my argument, the metaphor for the whole basis of making pre-judgements purely on the basis of looks.
d) I think this point is a little naive if you think uniform eliminates conflict between subcultures in school. As Dunc has pointed out and I’ve already acknoweledged, there are a hell of a lot of ways to identify people as belonging to “your” group.
Like I said, my argument was a springboard. I was using the point of school uniform to illustrate how stereotypes on appearance are inculcated from a very early age, and that many of these actually have no bearing to reality – they simply happen because they always have done.
That’s unfair. Firstly, it’s hardly surprising that a pastime at the cusp of media technology and journalism (both dominated by people with a class advantage) should be disproportionately populated with grammar and private school boys (for it’s mnostly boys). That’s hardly Eddie’s fault, whether he’s in that category or not.
It was a genuine question and it is not unfair to point out that the blogosphere, like journalism, is populated by people who are long on opinions about education but short on experience of what schools are actually like these days. How am I being deterministic? I am making the case for schools to have mechanisms whereby the teacher can establish him or herself as the administrator of rules. Given that an institution like a school has to have some form of dress-code anyway, uniforms are a legitimate way in which they can do this. I didn’t say uniform eliminates group identity, I said ‘helps ameliorate’. With all due respect to y’all, I think I’m in a better situation than any of you to judge whether this is the case or not.
I appreciate my experience is not typical because I have taught in some of the worst schools in Scotland’s worst-performing council but I can tell you that there are areas in the system that are approaching meltdown – and I’m not exaggerating this to make my point more interesting. We need every authority mechanism we can lay our hands on and uniform is one of these. I stand by and repeat my point: the idea that it is only eliminating fashion competition that is a rational defence of uniform shows a lack of imagination.
On a more general point, why are you insisting the only social function of dress-codes and uniforms are to instill prejudice? There is less formality in dress than there used to be but the worker today is more regulated than he or she used to be. You might think this is an unhappy coincidence – I happen to think they are related. Call it determinism if you will but I think the more subtle forms of social control have been de-legitimised so the ones that remain are blunter and ultimately more oppressive. But, hey – as long as people can express their individuality, man…
Erm, I’m not going to argue with you, Shuggy, because I agree with you. My partner is a teacher, in a special school, in London, so I’m about as acquainted as it’s possible to get with education at one remove. I’m also familiar with Glasgow; I was born in Govan and lived there for a number of years, and still go back for the football when I can afford it. I don’t hesitate to defer to your expertise on any of this. I merely took exception to your deterministic theory that Eddie was expressing his opinions because he’s a grammar school boy. It turns out he isn’t, but nevertheless my objection to the ad hominem stands. It was unfair. That, as they say, is all.
“Firstly, it’s hardly surprising that a pastime at the cusp of media technology and journalism (both dominated by people with a class advantage) should be disproportionately populated with grammar and private school boys ”
Codswallop.
What you mean is an INTELLIGENCE advantage.
More inteliigent parents (IMPORTANT QUALIFIER) tend, over large numbers, to have intelligent children.
Intelligent people tend to get better-paid jobs.
You CAN’T beat natural selection.
What you should do, and hasn’t been done, since 1968, is to enable poor, (even, shock, horror!) “working-class” intelligent children to get a decent education.
Because between the destruction of the Grammar schools by jealous spiteful idiots, and the removal of student grants, a poor child would now be unable to do as my father did.
His father died when he was 12, leaving my grandmother with two small sons to bring up, as a single mother, in 1923.
In those days, scholarships were very thin on the ground (disgracefully so) but my father got one, and by the time he retired, he was a Fellow of the ROyal Institute of Chemistry.
I don’t think you could do that now.
Her/his modern contemporaries would be crammed into a comprehensive, where academic excellence is frowned on, and even if he/she beat that, they would then be faced with the certainty of a £30 000 debt when he/she left university.
Grrr ……
Donald/Eddie – Ignore me; I’d had a bad day. In a school that, unusually for Glasgow, actually has a uniform. I’d maintain it’d be worse if they didn’t, though. ;-)