Published September 23, 2007 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune
Every few years the topic of school uniforms bubbles into the public discourse, usually right after the widely observed gyrations of teen pop stars or fashion trends involving tiny tight skirts and glitter. The more gyrations and the tighter the clothes, the louder the uniform talk.
This time around I’m a parent and I’m supposed to be outraged over inappropriate fashion. Well, I’m not outraged over the clothes the kids wear these days. Baffled, maybe. But not outraged. I am concerned for my three boys’ future ability to pay attention during their physics lectures. At their current rate of increased skimpiness, teenage girl fashions for 2019 will rely on the strategic placement of 8 foot lengths of medical gauze. If the retro trend for boys continues they’ll have to talk to these girls wearing blue leisure suits.
School uniforms solve several problems. Naturally school administrators wouldn’t have to measure the length of skirts or use calipers to gauge the appropriateness of low-rise jeans. Teachers wouldn’t have to send a six-and-a-half foot 11th grade Neanderthal to the rest room to turn inside out a t-shirt that uses the f-word as a noun, verb, adjective and conjunction. Uniforms would also help bridge the gaps between rich and poor, cool and awkward that dominate today’s elementary and secondary schools.
As a public school student from the Iron Range, I wasn’t required to wear school uniforms. That didn’t stop me. Almost every day in high school I wore khaki pants and a polo shirt. I still wear some of these shirts today. I wish I could say that I was just ahead of my time, acting on a premonition that school uniforms would one day arrive, but in truth I was just a nerd. That’s one nice thing about uniforms. Every kid gets to spend these awkward, confusing years in clothes that are pretty much the same as everyone else’s. Sure, some will fill out the clothes better than others and there remains no peace for the funny-looking people with big ears, but these inequalities will be reduced.
A friend of ours enrolls her daughter in a private school on the Iron Range that just implemented uniforms this year. She says her daughter actually likes the uniforms and, best of all, school shopping only took 10 minutes. That’s where school uniforms benefit parents. “Mom, you need to hand wash this skirt and line dry this blouse” becomes “Go to your closet, young lady, and put on the shirt and the pants.”
The Hibbing Daily Tribune conducted an online “quick poll” this past week about requiring uniforms in public schools. Early in the week, nearly half the voters (or perhaps one determined voter with a lot of free time) said “yes,” while about a third said that current dress codes should be better enforced and only 17 percent said “no” to school uniforms. This may not be an overwhelming mandate for uniforms but it shows that the topic begs discussion.
Not everyone would like school uniforms. Stores that sell tiny and/or ridiculous teen clothing, for instance, might fear massive piles of unsold “thongotards” (the thong and leotard combination would have been this year’s top new fashion). They shouldn’t worry. After school, uniformed teens will no doubt leap into their more fashionable outfits, bearing skin, lifting and separating. But maybe by then they’ll have learned more in school, calculating the total skin area exposed within a fraction of an inch. Watch out, international students, we’re back! U-S-A!
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune.