School uniform
An example of a uniform would be requiring button-down shirts, trousers for boys and blouses, pleated skirts for girls, with both wearing blazers.
A uniform can even be as simple as requiring collared shirts, or restricting colour choices and limiting items students are allowed to wear.
"[2] Conversely, a dress code is much less restrictive, and focuses "on promoting modesty and discouraging anti-social fashion statements", according to Marian Wilde.
[5] The earliest documented proof of institutionalized use of a standard academic dress dates back to 1222 when the then Archbishop of Canterbury ordered the wearing of the cappa clausa.
[10] New York City's then-new schools chancellor, Rudy Crew, made it clear that he would not follow Clinton's idea.
The study attributed favorable student behavioral changes and a significant drop in school discipline issues to the mandatory uniform policy.
[14] Brunsma stated that despite the inconclusiveness of the effects of uniforms, they became more common because "this is an issue of children's rights, of social control, and one related to increasing racial, class and gender inequalities in our schools.
In Scotland, some local councils (that have responsibility for delivering state education) do not insist on students wearing a uniform as a precondition to attending and taking part in curricular activities.
Even though the plaintiff appealed the decision, the Fifth Circuit Court also ruled in favour of the school board after implementing a four-step system that is still used today.
In response, the Littlefields filed a lawsuit against the school district, under the pretenses that this uniform mandate infringed on their rights as parents to control how they brought up their children and their education.
A junior by the name of Kimberly Jacobs was suspended a total of five times because she wore a religious shirt to school and got cited for uniform violations.
Her family sued the Clark County School District under the claims that her First Amendment rights were being infringed upon and that the uniform policy was causing students to be deprived of due process.
The next court ruled on the side of the school district as it determined that the uniform policy was in fact neutral and constitutional, and it dismissed the claims of the plaintiff.
In response, Mary and John Frudden, parents of a student sued the school district on the basis of it violating the First Amendment.
Uniforms are considered a form of discipline that schools use to control student behavior and often promote conventional gendered dress.
Schools that require students to wear a formal uniform almost universally provide trousers for boys and skirts or dresses for girls[citation needed].
Skirts differentiate the female from the male, thereby confirming traditional gender identities for students who must wear the correct attire corresponding to their sex.
As an example, miniskirts have been very popular in Japan, where they are common parts of school uniforms and came to be worn within the Kogal culture.
Two-thirds of the children questioned in the survey said they have experienced "unwanted sexual attention" in public, and 35 per cent said they have been touched, groped or grabbed without their consent.
Some public-school administrators hence began implementing uniform policies to improve the overall school environment and academic achievement of the students.
Nowadays, more teenagers are more frequently "dressing to articulate, or confound gender identity and sexual orientation", which brings about "responses from school officials that ranged from indifferences to applause to bans".
[40] There has been no concrete evidence of this, and studies by Ohio State University and others showed that uniforms did not increase test scores, grades, or focus.
[41] Kathleen Wade conducted an experiment to see if bullying and gang presence was higher in uniform or non-uniform schools.
Her results showed that bullying and gang presence significantly decreases with students wearing school uniforms.
[42] For example, in the first year of the mandatory uniform policy in Long Beach, California, officials reported that fighting in schools decreased by more than 50%, assault and battery by 34%, sex offenses by 74%, and robbery by 66%.
Advocates say that uniforms may create a safe learning environment for students to help them focus on school work and can lead them to great academic accomplishments.
Students who wear school uniforms may not feel anxious or nervous about peer pressure in buying new clothes to fit in or being teased by other classmates.
[43] Proponents have found a significant positive impact on school climate, safety, and students' self-perception from the implementation of uniforms.
Furthermore, the stockings were often cold, grey woolen kilt was too heavy and restrictive of movement, and the wind could cause it to reveal more than the girls wanted.
For girls, the dress/skirt caused modesty issues (e.g. hard to swing on monkey bars/run around while keeping her privacy, hence stop being active), and the kilts were too big and heavy.
