Girls wear skirts to UK school, headmaster calls police, locks them out

[Toni]

Yes, sheep are much easier to control than people who believe they have choices in life.

So I'm generally opposed to uniforms in schools - but one thing to note is that class-based bullying is also a real thing.

We never had a ton of money growing up, and I'd often have to buy the irregular jeans from the discount rack, but we always had clothes on our back. I also knew most of the jocks, and was invited to all the parties, so I never ended up on the receiving end of things. I do remember one time in high school, sitting on the bleachers after gym class, where one of the guys on the baseball team asked me why I spend time with 'Nancy', because her mom was an alcoholic and she ended up going to school multiple times with makeshift clothing she fashioned from towels when she was in elementary school.

That fucked me up at the time, and it's something that's always sort of stuck with me. I think you're right, but the mentality behind uniforms isn't entirely cynical.

You've made a good point re: social pressures to dress in a certain (expensive) way.

I grew up in an area where we were all.....at best, barely middle class. Girls all tried very hard to manage to have 5 distinct outfits to wear throughout the week so they didn't have to 'repeat' their outfits. Once we were allowed to wear jeans, it was much easier to just switch out the top, and wear the same jeans every day for a week without it being remarkable. Plus, a bunch of us learned to sew just so we could afford some variety in our wardrobe. Not having the pressure to keep up with other kids was a real help. Still, I remember one boy who was particularly shoddy in his dress in second grade. It was obvious that he had a rough home life and was often sent to school in clothing that was dirty and had holes and wasn't necessarily suitable for the winter weather. I remember one winter day feeling really bad because he didn't have socks. One day, he was absent after rollcall in class and the teacher told us all that she would have our hides if we dared to ever make fun of him for his clothing or lack of bathing. He had been sent to the nurse's office so that he could clean up and put on some clean clothes that were apparently in the school office for such circumstances.

Where I grew up and where I've raised my kids, the only kids who wore uniforms were those who went to private schools and whose families were presumed to have money. So, that's also a difference, I think. Also, when my kids were in high school, many families simply gave the funds they had budgeted for clothing to their high schooler who then went shopping in the thrift stores and charity shops and pocketed the difference. That leveled a lot of things out: a lot of the well to do kids were shopping at the same places the not very well to do kids shopped. Also the community ethos was that high school students had jobs, making the 'rich' kids much more equal to the poor kids. My kids' friends were literally the offspring of everyone from millionaires to trades people to factory workers to professors/doctors/lawyers to chronically unemployed.