No.

I think it is. It’s a capitalist attempt to break the spirit of the young and get people ready for having to wear uniforms for work.

For me, the uniform was liberating. People who wanted to bully me needed to find something more substantive than just my clothes. Bullies tend to be stupid, so this was hard for them.

If your individuality is all tied up in your physical appearance, try to develop your mind a bit. I am nonconformist in a thousand ways, each of which is more important than how i dress.

There are valid arguments for and against, but I really don’t think the word ‘authoritarianism’ is at all applicable here.

No. The uniformity somewhat eliminates kids being picked on for being poor and not having the best department store clothes. Children will always be little shuts to each other but uniforms at least removes one reason.

Imo it’s much better than a cult of clothing brands.

In my experience it seemed like uniforms were kinda another grift. You gotta buy everything just so from this specific place and you might never wear any of it again afterwards. I also got in trouble fairly frequently for accidentally having some part of my uniform out of order, which had more to do with forgetfulness or neurodivergence than anything.

At the same time, I didn’t really feel like it interfered with my ability to think critically or independently, but that might just be me. I was always weird enough that anyone who would have bullied me over clothes would’ve bullied me over other stuff, and my head was in the clouds anyway so I hardly noticed what I was wearing.

If anything, perhaps things like that biased my thinking in a libertarian direction, out of rebellion. It’s very easy to think that way when you’re young, and tired of parents and teachers telling you what to do.

My mind works differently from most people’s and my experiences may be atypical. But when I googled for studies I found mixed results, it doesn’t appear that there are conclusive results showing a correlation between uniforms and academic performance.

In any case, I think it’s that big of a deal. It is messed up, generally speaking, how little control kids have over their lives in the US and how people’s intrensic motivation is often killed off and they’re pushed around by extrensic motivators, rather than cooperating with what they actually want. I would say that uniforms can potentially contribute to that larger problem.

School uniforms level the outward socioeconomic presentation of students.

If it weren’t school uniforms, then the oppositional-defiant disorder would present in some students another way. Not statistically relevant.

It’s only authoritarian if the teachers / administration also wear a similar uniform, but slightly different to denote rank.

Otherwise, it’s actually accidentally kind of socialistic, in that the divisions of class between your peers becomes less obvious, and there’s more cohesion with your fellow students versus those in authority. It’s easier for the students to rally together against something when they’re all wearing the same thing.

Otherwise, it’s actually beneficial to authoritarians to have no dress code, because student cliques would strengthen, and infighting would be more common.

For the USA, think about how both major parties use color to help separate people. If the colors of Democrats and Republicans were the same though, the division would be weaker.

Uniforms have historically been used to unify groups rather than to control them.

I suppose it probably seems strange to an outsider but in a country where it’s the norm for every school, it didn’t feel like that to me at all. I see it more as an equaliser? In a way I also kind of miss not having to decide what to wear every day.

Honestly, my main concern about school uniforms is that I think they ought to be standardised and subsidised, because the expense can sometimes be a problem.

In elementary school we had a cheap (literally cheap, 5 euro) uniform that covered everything so it would protect the underneath clothes from inks, foods, spills. Also it didn’t matter if someone wore some expensive clothes as they were covered.

I noticed immediately from the first days in high school how something like that would have been useful as bullies would pick anyone about their clothing appearance. So there was an “unofficial” uniform, if you didn’t wear a brand name sweater then you were a loser to bully.

Now, I saw the elite schools uniform, expensive shirt under an expensive cardigan and a tie… that is ridiculous and I feel a way to take more money from the rich families as the expensive uniform can be bought only from them and need to purchase multiple sets to wear over a week

Oh absolutely can be, and is absolutely often used as such.

However, as usual depends on the context. Properly subsidized it can help students not only gave greater pride in their appearance and success in classes if you aren’t having to worry about not getting good clothes or any that fit properly.

On the other hand it can be cripplingly over expensive and cheap ass.

They’re about training children to comform and obbey arbitrary rules created by people in position of authority and to value impression more than behaviour.

Of the countries I lived in, Britain was the one that had most of this shit and was also the one with the strongest “know your place” and “keep up appearences” mindsets of them all, especially amongst the middle and upper classes which were the ones were this shit was more common (there was a time of working class cultural significance during the 70s and 80s, which were a veritable explosion of creativity with movements like “punk”, but the social mobility and freedom that created it were crushed in the meanwhile, so working class kids can’t make it in the Arts anymore and that whole class is back at being culturally irrelevant outside fighting each other after football games).

Schools in my area had a dress code, and my school almost succeeded at requiring a select jacket model as a must (done by a single local company connected to a school admin, wink-wink), but faced backlash over poor price/quality balance 🙃

One of the unusual upsides, many men well in their 20s, who otherwise couldn’t be bothered, had their high school formal suits to wear on future funerals and weddings. I was one of them and that was handy.

If the uniform should be there, to ensure it’s not hostile, it may be:

1. Of basic rules. Formal dresses, dark under the waist line, white over it.
2. Civilian models, without a glimpse of cop/military details and ranks, insignias.
3. Common to everyone without any color differentiation (and requirements to buy it in exact shade of a color).
4. Rather cheap or even subsidized, shared from older to younger kids, because children are frequently growing out of them and it’s a bummer to buy ten+ sets of dresses.
5. Purposely unisex and non-sexualized models.

My post history and reputation will back that I am left as fuck, but I love uniforms because I hate clothes and all the stupid ass stipulations society has purposely and inadvertently put on them. Spending any more than 5 secs selecting what’s gonna cover me for the day is already too long.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate all the ideological arguments made against them, and don’t counter them, I simply yearn to live in a world where we’re ALL on the same team and working together, and what one wears means fuck and all.