School uniforms and preperation for work life

Carlos Roca wrote: »

The sum total of the school experience does inculcate children with the 'values' that perpetuate societal structures with deference to authority a central tenet.

Tin Foil Hat wrote: »

They achieve a sense of self-importance for the power-tripping, pencil-pushing desk-jockeys who would rather implement silly, pointless rules than spend their energies on the actual education of our children.
They are also handy for lazy parents who prefer to abdicate their responsibility to control and discipline their own children to a government employee.

You are missing the carefully constructed point of tiresome rules and petty regulations. They are an artfully enacted training ground to teach kids to question authority.

Oh dear, another one of these...

I've got a question for all posters who firmly believe that school uniforms are "levelers" and stop children from being bullied :

Do you think Irish kids are intrinsically more nasty and prone to bullying others for reasons of attire, or do you have another theory as to why almost all other European countries are managing to get their children through school safe and sound for the most part without making them all wear the same clothes?

Alot of you mention the kids making the comments about scruffy uniform, but it was teachers I had the problem with.
I mentioned earlier the ridiculous shoes my daughter needed - well she says the head goes round the school looking at the students' feet to make sure of the correct shoes, would his time not be better filled?
She went in with an ordinary rain jacket with hood and was told it wasn't part of the uniform - the uniform jacket doesn't have a hood, very useful for the Irish weather.
She had a jumper that was showing the worst of wear after a hard year and had to get another one (respectable looking) to wear for a practical exam. I bought one that was way too big for her so that she wouldn't grow out of it during the summer!
I could go on, and on, and on, and on ........
None of this has anything to do with bullying students, just teachers on a power trip and a hopeless parents association

I seriously considered moving her, but she is actually happy in the school, has plenty of friends and would anywhere else be much better?

As a kid, I appreciated the uniform because it meant fewer jibes over who had fashionable or unfashionable clothes. But the rules could be stupid.

At my school, girls could wear black, brown, or burgundy shoes, but boys could only wear black or brown. When two boys arrived one September in burgundy shoes, oblivious to the under-publicised rule, they were told off and told they had to polish them black that night. One boy did; the other then became a piggy-in-the-middle between his form tutor and mother, who refused to ruin his shoes that way.

It went on for a week, much to the anguish of the boy, until the mother backed down and the boy came in with burgundy shoes smeared in black.

All that aggro and for what?

Oh, and ties are stupid and no man or boy should feel forced to wear one.

Femme_Fatale wrote: »

I just like how practical uniforms are - whether at school or work. Saves laundry and money. I don't read anything more into them.
And they're pretty regimented environments anyway, with a bunch of regulations.

I wouldn't agree with uniforms in e.g. college.

I don't find them practical in the slightest. More washing and more ironing. I wouldn't bother to iron a child's track suit, t shirt or jeans. Waste of time. After half an hour in such clothes there is no difference between ironed and non ironed anyway. Shirts and school pants are a completely different story. There is no way they can be left non ironed. And the two outfits every day creates far more washing. I would much, much prefer my sons school had no uniform.