School Uniform - The Final Showdown

By Jan Gamm

Okay all you kids out there who are lucky enough to still be at school, here is the last and final word on that old chestnut; the school uniform issue. Here is your opportunity to finally come clean on all of the subterfuge currently enjoying exceptional world sympathy for a game which is as old as mankind itself.

The truth of the matter is - and let us all understand that nobody is more verbal and more passionate about truth than a bunch of kids fresh from the classrooms and laboratories of our finest learning institutions - is that it is all just another scam to get to dress how the hell you want and not have to conform to crummy grey pleated skirts and dopey shorts and caps which make you look like a twerp. Right?

Well even if you hotly disagree with that statement, the fact is we have all been in high school at some stage in our admittedly distant development and we have all slunk into the bathroom to roll over the waistband of a cruddy, scratchy, over warm skirt or pick holes in a pair of sixty denier tights so we might not have to wear them to school the next day.

For boys the problem can be even more distressing. You take a lad with sticky out hair, a crop of angry, hormone fed pimples and elbows which project at impossible angles to the rest of his body. Put him in a pair of branded loafers or trainers, with slope hip jeans, shades and a hoodie and he will look semi cool, transformed into someone to be reckoned with by cruel playground mafia - especially if he has a face piercing to match the rest of the outfit. Put him in a pair of neatly pressed school trousers, a blazer with a badge and a school cap and he will look - actually - dorky. He will also feel dorky; a walking advertisement for adolescence. And that is the point all you champions of free fashion in schools are trying to make. Right?

So let us drop the nonsense about freedom of expression, violation of human rights and all that other silly affected rubbish about uniforms causing mental torture and other fairy tales.

The truth comes down to this - why are we trying to make this poor kid wear stuff which makes him feel uncomfortable? Why are we insisting on paying good money for regulation uniform when our kids have perfectly serviceable clothes hanging in their wardrobes? Perhaps we are clinging to the final frontiers of classroom discipline by trying to instil a sense of pride in our respective educational centres. Perhaps we are exercising a sneaky bit of superiority - after all, we had to wear a uniform and we are going to make sure our kids have to wear one, yes sir! I do not think so. We are doing it because we like the way our kids look in uniform.

My child has attended schools where a uniform policy was not in force. She subsequently attended a school where the uniform code was extremely strict and admittedly she hated having to don a blazer and tie each morning. She hated having to change out of her uniform as soon a she got home and hang it up so that it was ready for wear the following day. But my goodness she looked terrific in her crisp white shirt and regulation tie.

A uniform is a pain in the you know where for parents as well as for the wearer, you know. Half the stuff you need may only be purchased at designated school stores where the prices charged are way above a reasonable profit margin, you have to ensure you have enough shirts to last a school week and spare ties so that if one gets lost you have one in reserve, and you spend half your life ironing in pleats, trying to get grass stains out of sport kit and fretting if your child comes home without the school scarf you paid a fortune for and which you forgot to name tag. Yet, truthfully, we still like to see our kids in uniform and not wearing the ragbag of outfits they seem to enjoy wearing on weekends.

So, sorry kids, you seem to be stuck with it for a few more years.

Jan Gamm writes reflections on life with an emphasis on world travel. She has lived in many countries and traveled extensively in the Far East, the Middle East, America, South America and throughout the South Pacific. She writes for fun and for money whenever she can manage it.