Uniforms in School

Uniforms in Schools

In today’s society children do not look at uniforms as a good thing for them or their schools. Children simply do not want to wear them; they do not like the idea of not being able to choose what they would like to wear. If children began to wear uniforms in public schools it would decrease the violence in the schools and help the children achieve higher grades. If you were to go into a Catholic school today you would find that almost all of them have their students in uniforms. Students in Catholic schools do not get into many fights and focus more on their school work than on what everyone else is wearing. I attended a Catholic school for three years and then was moved to a public school. I saw many things when I started to go to a public school; everyone was concerned with what everyone else was wearing and if you were not wearing the right types of clothing you were made fun of. In the Catholic school no one was criticized for what he or she wore because everyone was wearing the same thing, clothing never caused any fights to occur because someone was making fun of a person. Therefore, I strongly support the idea that children should wear uniforms in public school.

As, said before, if everyone was wearing the same thing there would be no conflict between students on who’s wearing what. The less conflict there is, the more children can concentrate on their school work. Also, the introduction of uniforms would help keep the school safer; you would know who the students are and who the visitors are. Also, students wouldn’t be able to wear big, baggy clothing to school. This would prevent the children from hiding anything in their clothing. In urban areas and larger cities this is a big problem. There are more gangs, and students who may be affiliated with the gangs may bring guns or drugs into the school. Also, the gangs have some form of representing themselves, either with a color or some kind of symbol. Gang members in large cities have a tendency to stand outside around schools and if they see some child come outside wearing anything that may in some way represent another gang’ the gang members may become violent and attack the child. If the children were wearing uniforms there would be less violence around the school because there would be no way that the gang member could think that the child is in or affiliated with a gang. Back in 1994 when school uniforms were made mandatory in Long Beach, California, the school officials found that school crime decreased by thirty-six percent; sex offenses dropped by seventy- four percent; physical fights between students decreased by fifty-one percent; weapon offenses dropped by fifty percent; assault and battery went down by thirty-four percent; children being suspended dropped thirty-two percent; and vandalism decreased by eighteen percent. With less violence in the school, more students want to come to school (King 1). Therefore more students would be more interested in going to school.

On the other hand, there are some objections to having children wear uniforms in school. The big one is the price of the uniforms; sometimes they may cost a lot if the school goes through a certain company. If the school didn’t go through a certain company but just