Liberté, égalité, fraternité

[Anton Gramscescu]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Reed of the Valley People wrote:

Didn't we have the school uniform debate on another thread? As I recall, I won that debate convincingly. In fact I recall all of OTF cheering and carrying me out of the arena on their shoulders like in Chariots of Fire. Dont you remember?

There are so many threads that end that way, it's so hard to remember specific ones...

[Wyatt Earp]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Sorry, A de C: "without any doubt at all" was rhetoric. It's my view, though as you say it wasn't Illich's, that "de-schooling" would result in a fall in the kind of competences that, under a more organised system, can be targeted and measured.

[VTTBoscombe]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Speaking as someone who used to have to wear a school uniform in the UK, to now being someone to send their kids to a French school where they don't need to wear one - hooray for French thinking.

I hated my uniform at school - and Wolf2 was the only one who alluded to the point I always think about - the richer kids had nice kit while, the less well off kids had tatty old hand me down blazers. So how that evened out the class differences - I am not sure.

The schools, like the local 11 plus winners ( no chip on my shoulder sir)round Bournemouth/Poole insisted on a certain shop only selling the uniforms - who charged the earth for it. - So less well off families had a nice additional bill to try and meet. "Luckily" I was too thick for those schools.

On my brief returns to God's own country, if it is school time - the sight of kids in uniforms always suprises me as it seems so odd to see now.

One thing though - uniform trousers for girls - christ that looks so bad and unstylish.

Of course Madeline went to French school and all the girls there wore uniforms -in straight lines too.

[Bored Of Education]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Before Chris J jumps down my throat, that doesn't mean I think all teachers are fascists. I live with one.

A fascist? That's very honest of you

[Bored Of Education]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Many people appear to be going back to their own education to illustrate what is "wrong" with uniform. These arguments are as redundant as me going back to a time when the geography teacher used to throw board-dusters at us and the PE teacher used to punch us in the stomach in order to criticise any discipline in school.

As I said, whatever the origins, school uniforms are seen as a leveller. I say this who has discussed this at govenor level and this is the primary if not only intention for them. In this, of course, they aren't perfect but this doesn't make the argument "unserious".

School uniforms like sweatshirts and polo shirts that are practical and cheaper than branded clothes are a good idea. Blazers and ties less so.

UE, thinking about it, the Home & Away lot had a red uniform and the Neighbours lot have blue but part from that, they are similar.

[Ball Comrade]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Surely kids just get their consumerist bullying ammunition from non-school situations, if the parents of poor kids have to spend a large percentage of their clothing budget on uniform?

[Reed John]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

I believe what the uniform (or dress code. A lot of posh schools in the USA have dress codes but not uniforms) includes matters perhaps a bit more than the uniformity of it. As I've ranted about before, I'm convinced that any dress code that insists on a jacket and tie is a tool of the ruling class to signify the social superiority of people who don't actually do any manual labor. I don't want to pass that idea onto children.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Why on Earth... wrote:

Sorry, A de C: "without any doubt at all" was rhetoric. It's my view, though as you say it wasn't Illich's, that "de-schooling" would result in a fall in the kind of competences that, under a more organised system, can be targeted and measured.

Ah right. That is uncontestable I think.

Given his despair at what he believed reading had become (ie: largely a matter of data retrieval and divorced from actual thinking) it's also quite possible he would have found literacy evaluation irrelevant or futile. I thought that might be where you were going.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Can't one be serious but wrong?

Well yeah of course, up to a point. Depends where you start laughing, I suppose.

[WOM]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Speaking of which, I had an interesting morning dropping off my kids.

As we pulled into the school, my son (4) says "I'm not wearing pocket pants."

"No, you wanted to wear track pants."

"But I want pocket pants."

"Yes, but you chose those...and we're already at school. Tomorrow you can wear pocket pants."

"But I don't have a pocket for my lip glop." (Chapstick/lip moisturizer/whatever it's called round your way)

"No...but...."

Cue three-alarm meltdown, refusal to exit car, physical wresting of child from vehicle, tearful recriminations, profanity, and an attempt to run from the building. It was, mercifully, put to an end when a teacher grabbed his hand and whisked him off to feed the guinea pigs. I owe the woman big-time. Point? Uniform would have been welcome.

[Bored Of Education]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Pocket pants?

Track pants??

Lip glop???

[WOM]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Oh, I know. I blame the parents.

[EIM]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Nowt wrong with track pants. They were called that when I was a kid.

[Guest]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Surely kids just get their consumerist bullying ammunition from non-school situations, if the parents of poor kids have to spend a large percentage of their clothing budget on uniform?

The kids do have to wear the uniform 5 days a week, and if uniforms are of the 'a blue shirt and navy trousers' variety which can be got in drip dry polyester in Tescos for 2 quid for 3 (made by much poorer kids, no doubt, sadly) then it's got to be cheaper to clothe them that way than it would be to have to dress them the way their horrid social pressures require for those 5 days?

Everyone has good points really. I would say girls bully each other quite a bit based on appearance and at my school the individualising things - rolling up your skirt at the waist, etc - were quite important. as was the fight to be allowed to wear black tights, (the skirts were blue you see, and we didn't care that they didn't even go with black anyway) I remember getting into trouble over this. Like Adrian Mole and his socks. It was just one of those things. Like jewellery. Thing is I'm sure there would have been many more conflicts betwen kids and between kids and teachers over dress codes (of whatever kind) without a uniform and much more consequent trouble. And I do remember being grateful for it, as one of the less well off people, because I hadn't learned that it didn't matter if you didn't have the nicest clothes so long as you were a nice person. (I have since learned that.)

I also remember being called to see the headmistress about 100 times because people on the 185 bus had complained about girls in our uniform being obnoxious. There was a definite thing about 'representing the school in public' which I think is a little bit different from having your behaviour actually controlled, but then that might just be perception. I always understood that we could go to the pub or throw stuff at people on buses or whatever else so long as we weren't recognisably from our school.

[ChrisJ]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

WOM - haha. Excellent stuff. Gotta love those guinea pigs.

I'm really not up to much as I was up at 4.15 to get my eldest to Heathrow before work. So this may all be bollox.

TonTon wrote

Teachers aren't the enemy, of course. Education is not simply a question of control, or of churning out factory fodder, or however some may like to put it.

It isn't true, either, that education as practised is an uncomplicated good, nor is it true that teachers play no role in enforcing conformity.

I find pro-uniform arguments of the "it's an equaliser" type to be entirely unserious. The other arguments in favour of uniforms seem to be built around the idea that they can help to get kids to do what the education system wants them to do. Again, I don't find that to be an uncomplicated good.

If I need to say that I find the teachers I know - friends, family, comrades - to be, almost to a person, very hard-working and clearly very concerned with the welfare of the kids they teach, then let it hereby be said.

I agree with just about all of that. I recognise uniform is coercive in the strict sense; children don't get a choice (but then raising children is not always about giving children unrestricted choice). On the other hand, while OTFers, I would aver, probably mostly come from the sort of background in which education (in the wider sense) was valued, sadly this is not uniformly the case in British culture, and the proportion of alienated families and children is increasing. So a complicated good is perhaps better than no good?

For many children, 'formal' education, whatever its shortcomings, represents their best chance of 'breaking the cycle', but, like eating your greens, just because it's good for you...

Teaching often involves a combination of relationship building, bribery, behaviourism, distraction techniques, and so on; sometimes so that the 29 children you've persuaded, against the odds to take an interest in the 'aw' phoneme, can continue to learn without disruption from the one who, maybe understandably, doesn't see the point. Facetious phonics aside, here's a whole bundle of things that are contingent on the unnatural act of producing mass literacy alongside the kind of specialisation that makes modern society tick.

Uniform is one of those things which, in theory, in a perfect world, I wouldn't support. Come the revolution*, it can go. However in the context of today's UK, it's part of a bundle of things which help us get by. Which doesn't just mean get us through the day, it means, among other things, giving the growing number of kids from shitty homes a respite and an opportunity.

I'd also add, probably irrelevantly, that although kids inevitably want to push against any boundaries (regardless of where you set them), it is my unchanging experience that they are happier and more secure where (appropriate) boundaries exist. None of us learn self-discipline unless discipline is modelled for us, and clothing seems to be a relatively harmless aspect of that.

*It feels like such a long time since I used to read Class War... Yep, hypocrite here...

[Bored Of Education]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

I'd also add, probably irrelevantly, that although kids inevitably want to push against any boundaries (regardless of where you set them), it is my unchanging experience that they are happier and more secure where (appropriate) boundaries exist. None of us learn self-discipline unless discipline is modelled for us, and clothing seems to be a relatively harmless aspect of that.

Spot on. As I say, as a kid, I hated school uniform

[Guest]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

I must have mentioned this before buyt Ronald Searle's daughter went to my school and he used our uniforms as the basis for those of St Trinian's.

[Wyatt Earp]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Chris, I think "appropriate" is often a very question-begging term, and it seems that way to me here. I'm pretty sure no-one's suggesting no boundaries at all; the debate's about what boundaries are the right ones. And the thing is, uniforms carry with them a shitload of purely arbitrary boundaries: a whole load of rules each of which has no intrinsic rationale at all.

I think I'd be against that even if it wasn't meat and drink to a certain kind of petty-minded teacher. Which of course it is.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

What's wrong with pure abitrariness, per se? It's purely arbitrary which side of the road we drive on, but it sure as hell makes a lot of positive difference that we all obey the convention.

[Bored Of Education]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

uniforms carry with them a shitload of purely arbitrary boundaries: a whole load of rules each of which has no intrinsic rationale at all

What would these be in modern uniforms?

[Wyatt Earp]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Toro: Count On It wrote:

What's wrong with pure abitrariness, per se? It's purely arbitrary which side of the road we drive on, but it sure as hell makes a lot of positive difference that we all obey the convention.

It's not purely arbitrary which side of the road each of us drives on.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Nor, by the same token, is it purely arbitrary which set of umiform regulations each child is subject to.

[Wyatt Earp]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Yes it is, in the sense of there being no intrinsic rationale.

[Bored Of Education]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Couldn't the same be said of the school hours or days even?

[Wyatt Earp]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

No, neither of you are following, for which I must be at fault.

My son's school's just introduced a uniform. There's a regulation about how many stripes must be showing on his tie. This looks an awful lot like a boundary for the sake of having a boundary. The same can't be said for any of the examples either of you mention, all of which have an element of arbitrariness in which particular convention is adopted, but in all of which it's clear that some convention or other must be adopted by all, and once adopted, adhered to by each.