Are Uniforms Necessary in the Educational Setting?

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Are Uniforms Necessary in the Educational Setting?
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April 17, 2017
Introduction
In most schools in the world, uniforms are regarded as one of the main requirements not only for the teachers, the staff, and the administrators but more especially the students. The principle behind this is that uniforms are believed to imply discipline on the part of the students. Discipline not only in terms of following rules but also in the learning process. However, a different argument states that the use of school uniforms is nothing that an authoritative implementation of rules that aims to produce docile bodies (Edgecombe 8). Nevertheless, in most cases, schools and its administrators do not necessarily think that they want to produce docile bodies, but instead, they implement uniforms due to the belief that this creates a stimulus that encourages students to study and learn more. However, the author of this article believes that school uniforms do not increase the learning efficiency of the students, and serve nothing than to create ‘docile bodies’, which prepares them for systematic and uncritical modes of production such as the capitalist system.
Uniforms and the Learning process
In England, most schools tend to implement “sartorial strictness” because GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) results from secondary school units have shown that almost 90% of the top-performing schools have required strict dress codes for their students. As stated by Charles Clarke (a British Labor party Politician) in an article released by the British Department for Education, "uniforms are good for discipline and school ethos, giving pupils a real sense of identity with their school" (Department of Education). However, the author of this article believes that one of the flaws of this study was that the findings were not tested for its ‘statistical significance’. Testing for the significance of this study would be crucial because a high percentage of elementary and secondary school in England has implemented the use of school uniforms ever since they started, and thus the study might have ‘misrepresented’ the population, thinking that the reason for their GSCE scores is their dress-code. In contrast to this, cases such as Anthony Gell school in Wirksworth shows that “non-uniformed” schools also score among the top, in terms of GSCE despite their dress-code. In America, it could be seen that a significant difference between schools which implement uniforms and those which do not exist. According to Lake, about 40% of elementary and secondary schools in America have a dress code in place for urban areas, whereas only 9% implement it in rural areas. In relation to learning, it is undeniable that research has proven that dress-codes in both elementary and secondary schools have reduced the rate of ‘absenteeism’ and increased the rate of students who graduated by 8% (Lake). However, the same research also states that this rule does not produce a significant amount of learning productivity or better SAT scores for students. Following from these facts, it could be argued that students who we...