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We read with alarm the recent article in The Villager about the possibility of your imposing a uniform requirement on elementary students in North Pocono school district. The article was on page 1 of the Wednesday, February 9, 2000 issue under the headline of " To Uniform or Not to Uniform, That's the Question". An article about requiring uniforms for the Taylor Riverside School appeared in a recent edition of the Scranton Times. This article also portrays uniforms as a cure for everything from poor attendance to low self esteem. Since members of the Board may have had occasion to read both of these articles, we have rearranged the reasons listed in both articles (without changing the wording they used at all) and responded to them.
We are the parents of a child currently enrolled at Moscow Elementary Center. We feel that it is vitally important to look closely at the issues involved, and not simply accept the vague generalities offered in recent newspaper articles as the basis for favoring uniforms. Nor do we believe it is advisable to simply wait for the results of an opinion survey, when we are both knowledgeable enough to realize that the nature of the survey questions and the bias of the surveyors themselves may weigh the results in favor of uniforms. If some local school administrators were not inclined towards this program, clearly this issue and a meeting talking about the advantages of uniforms would never have arisen. Let's take a closer look at some of the arguments raised in The Villager article:
If being cost effective is something that parents' desire then let uniforms be an acceptable dress option for school. Those parents who wish to buy and clothe their children in uniforms may do so. The cost effective argument ignores the investment prudent parents may have already made in clothes that were purchased last spring or this fall or winter large enough to be worn for several years. Also it ignores the practice that many families have either because they seek to economize or because it has become a family tradition to hand down clothing amongst family and friends. There will be no more wearing a favorite sweater of a brother, sister or friend to school if this policy goes into effect. And when you add in the hidden costs of extra parental effort involved for any children who need to change clothes for after school activities (see below), this cost-effectiveness argument starts to have some holes in it.
They may well be that when new or well cared for, but so are many other outfits. If this is the school's goal, then just have a dress code that requires neat and clean, but does not dictate what the clothing is to be. In point of fact, the uniforms are only neat and clean until they get scuffed, torn and or dirty, the sort of things that kids do to whatever they are wearing. Let's address some practical issues not mentioned in either article:
There is a need for different clothes to meet activities scheduled on school days. When our son goes to scouts, we will have to get him home to change out of his school uniform and into a scout uniform. When he is going to go play soccer after school, we guess we cannot dress him in a good looking sweat outfit, but must take him home to change clothes before he goes to the field. Other parents can think of more circumstances where we end up adding to our workload by changing our kids in and out of uniforms.
There is a need for a different thickness, or warmth of clothing to meet weather conditions. When it is too cold outside for our son to go to school in uniform pants, under this plan he would have to take a change of clothes to school and change in and out of his uniform at school. Shall we assume lockers or other safe storage space will be provided? Have these costs been included in the calculations? When it is really cold out, we tend to dress our children in layers. This will create a problem when our children show up in any non regulation sweaters, vests, or other garments that are necessary to protect them from the cold while they wait for a school bus or engage in after school activities. When it is too hot for long pants or long sleeve shirts, our kids will need four sets of t-shirts and shorts or skorts outfits.
The positions in favor of uniforms in these public forums are being presented at least in part by spokespeople from uniform companies, who can hardly be described as disinterested parties. In other cases local principals are restating arguments they have gathered from meetings with uniform company personnel or from publications and studies presented to them by uniform companies.
While this process may have developed a logical seeming set of arguments, it also is selling a set of values that needs to be challenged. It is our contention that much of what is presented in either of these articles tends to give a one sided view and is based on values that are not what we should be teaching.
Values to teach our children are more important than appearances
(the quotes are from The Villager):
This looks like a politically correct way of saying we are for the removal of diversity in dress and opinion. This is already a community with virtually no minority students and this "leveling" will not lead our children to view difference as beneficial. The message we are sending is everyone should look and behave the same. That is not a value to be promoted in a diverse democratic society. It does not prepare our children to live in a world where everyone does not dress or look or think the same.
People are not equal, they only should be treated equally under the law or given equal respect for their common humanity, and those are quite different matters than legislating a false equality through uniforms. Team sports cut players that aren't good enough from their rosters. This is a fact of life. We are not equal, even though we all have value. Some people are tall, some are short, and shall we have all the shorter people wear shoes with lifts so they look the same height? Perhaps we should just give everyone an "A+ grade" regardless of their ability or test scores, so that there will be a "level playing field".
Why should we strive to eliminate "fashion competition" with statements like "no child's clothes are better than another's"? There will still be a spread between children with items like jewelry, shoes, outer coats, unless we are planning to make those uniform items as well. Instead as parents and educators we should use the differences in economic levels that might be evident in clothing (without singling anyone out) to teach our children real values. Real values like charity and giving to good causes to help those who may have less than we do. Real values such as the self worth of individuals reside in their good deeds and relationships to God and others, not their wealth or clothes. We do not gain by pretending that there is no poverty or that there is no wealth.
We need to teach children to excel, to emphasize the differences that make them individual, including the way they dress. The notion that somehow self-expression in dress is to be discounted and demeaned is not a good thing to teach. The minimizing of the concerns of parents and children who do not wish to be seen as the same as others is a dangerous process. It can lead to discrimination based simply on someone not wearing our uniform or our "gang colors". The worth of an individual child should not be measured by their conformity to the norm, but by his/her delightful differences from it.
The operating assumption that it is a good thing to eliminate the propensity for one child to want what another has only is valid, if the longing to have what another has turns into unacceptable behavior, like theft. We should talk to our children about how education and hard work can improve their chances of acquiring the things that they desire all the while stressing that good marriages, family and friendships are more important than clothes, cars, and houses.
And it does this by forcing them to look the same? Our son's first reaction upon learning by reading the article in The Villager is reproduced below. There is no way to reproduce his sarcasm, but be assured it was there. "No way. I don't want to be made to look like everyone else. It's stupid. It's like telling everyone to wear a sandwich board that says on both sides, 'Look at me, I am from Moscow Elementary Center!' "
An article about requiring uniforms for the Taylor Riverside School appeared in a recent edition of The Scranton Times. This article also portrays uniforms as a cure for everything from poor attendance to low self esteem.
Since members of the Board may have had occasion to read this article, we have rearranged the reasons listed in the article (without changing the wording used to make the point at all) and responded to each below:
Pro
Many of these points were developed by uniform companies out of their experience often with troubled
gang-infested crime-ridden urban school districts like the one we lived in Chicago before we moved here. The points they raise while potentially valid, simply do not apply to a low crime, relatively rural homogeneous population of fairly well-behaved kids whose lives are centered around their families and friends such as live in the North Pocono school district. There are no major problems with outsiders who are posing as elementary school age children infiltrating the elementary school in Moscow. There is no ring of children's clothing thieves operating at Moscow Elementary Center. Most of our children arrive on a bus. There is no easy opportunity the way they enter school in the morning for outsiders to sneak in anyway. This set of arguments is tantamount to
a cure without a disease.
Pro
In dealing with the cost effective statement, it is perhaps not as effective when one considers all the costs and effort that may be involved in this decision; the lost use of clothing already purchased to be used for more that one season, the clothing that now will not be allowed in school that we were going to give to a friend's child or to charity, the extra effort and time parents of active children will put into driving kids back and forth to change from school clothing into clothes for after school activities where the uniform is inappropriate.
Pro
It is hard not to start laughing at the preposterous nature of this claim. The uniform whether present or not has nothing to do with the choices listed above. Our children were doing all of these things before this idea ever surfaced.
Conformity is a dangerous idea:
Taken to its logical extreme we should have all boys and girls dress in uniforms everywhere they go. There was one notable group that did so; it was called the Hitler Youth. This leads us to our final point, which is a deeply personal one. We missed the Tuesday, February 1, meeting because we were picking our son up from Hebrew School in Clark Summit. We are Jewish. Any set of regulations that tells us that we have to dress the way someone in authority regulates brings back horrible memories of our people being required to wear yellow stars and later being given uniforms (which we are sure were cost-effective) to wear in death camps. We are religiously and morally opposed to anything that mandates that our son must dress in the clothing someone else dictates or wear the labels someone else has decided belong on him. He should be free to be himself, and make his own choices of free speech, religion and yes, even what outfit to wear to school tomorrow.
This is our position:
We want to be placed on any committee that creates the survey and thus be allowed to view the survey questionnaire before it is finalized or mailed to anyone. We know that the results can easily be biased by the very nature of the questions asked. For example if we asked:
"Would you be in favor of purchasing clothing for $ 92.00 that is designed for only one season, but that your child will have to wear no matter what the weather is like?"
We could virtually guarantee a high negative score. While this question is clearly biased and not very subtle, the survey process allows for more devious and just as misleading results to be generated.
Let's be sure that both those who favor and those who
oppose uniforms are represented in the design of the survey.
Further, you are advised that should you announce that uniforms are required regardless of said survey results, we will evaluate every possible option open to us to stop this action including:
As a hypothetical example, if the enforcement of your uniform policy will send children home who are not in uniform, ask yourself if you want to see headlines with these or any other words to the effect: "North Pocono School District denies Jewish boy the right to attend school".
Victor Cushing
