The School of Athens is a pupil-led academic society that challenges pupils to present and defend their thoughts in a supportive group of peers. More information is available on our School Societies.
This week’s engaging presentation and discussion – led by year 13 pupil, Seme – triggered an animated round of questions. Below is a summary of Seme’s presentation and highlights from the audience’s many questions.
Is School Uniform Really Beneficial?
School uniform was recorded in the UK in what, 1222 by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Uniforms are primarily meant to give schools a sense of identity. There is a statistic; parents spend around 213.4 pounds on uniform, which is 18% more than in 2018 in the uk. So, these are some reasons why uniforms may be harmful.
- Uniform removes a sense of individuality.
- Restricts a student’s freedom of expression and they can’t really be who they want to be. So if you want to dress as a hippie, dress as a hippie, it doesn’t really make a difference to social hierarchy in schools. Some people may argue if you have a uniform, everyone is going to be wearing the same thing, but there’s some schools that aren’t really strict about the accessories you can wear. So, you might have someone with a thrifted backpack and someone with a Prada bag. So there’s still going to be a difference.
- You can be bullied if you wear home clothes, but at the same time you can be bullied in uniform. Now everyone is wearing the same thing, so people are more likely to notice that maybe someone’s bigger than someone else or someone’s taller than someone else.
- Risk of revealing personal information. Let’s say you post a photo or something in your school uniform, then people might see where you are and they could do that research on you and that’s not very safe.
- Uniform doesn’t always cater the people’s comfort. So this can go both just how you dress or also religious things. For example, some people might wear hijabs and stuff they need to cover up, but your school uniform has a skirt that is kind of revealing, so that’s not very nice. Also, people might just find it kind of uncomfortable.
- Uniform can get lost slash stolen easily. I know this is from a personal experience! People keep taking my uniform because if you’re all wearing the same thing, people just grab it because everything looks the same.
- Once you’re done with school, you’re not going to be wearing your uniform in your free time. And people can get made fun of for wearing their uniform in a certain way. So let’s say someone wears this skirt really short, if someone wears it really long, it could be made really long.
Highlights from the Post Presentation Audience Discussion, Questions and Thoughts
In state schools in Scotland the only set part of uniform is wearing your tie, and many people still don’t wear that. So, how would you say your arguments would tackle that? When there’s uniform but there’s not really uniform?
Do you not think a uniform gives you the feeling that you’re ready for the day? Your parents get ready for work, they put their suits on. I put my suit on and I know I’m ready for the day.
There might be quite a lot of people that say wouldn’t feel comfortable expressing their culture or their sexuality or their differences at school and maybe a uniform would help them feel more comfortable as they don’t feel like they need to express themselves. Don’t you think a uniform would help people feel like they fit in more?
What about sports team uniforms? Isn’t the idea of a school and the idea of a team technically the same? We’ve all said that they’re effectively our team. So, by presenting ourselves in the same way that a football team might, we’re all in the same kit. We’re all in the same uniform to show that we’re together and it differentiates us from other schools.
Earlier we said uniform stopped people fitting into things that would accentuate some parts of their body that they didn’t want to be accentuated. But if you go to a school which doesn’t have a uniform and you’re on the sports team for example, they’ll often have a set of shirts that they’ve kept through years just to give to people where they go to matches. But if the uniform doesn’t fit you, that could make you feel uncomfortable. It might be shirts that are too small or massive and make you feel uncomfortable.
In the classroom. It can be a distraction not to wear uniform. When you are walk in and everyone’s in non-uniform, you’re like, oh, what are they wearing? Do you not think that if everyone wore different clothes it’d be distraction?
