Seems very much like indoctrination to get kids to “fall in line” and enforced conformity, to try to remove independent thinking.
I’ve always hated the idea of that. What do you think about it?
For me, the uniform was liberating. People who wanted to bully me needed to find something more substantive than just my clothes. Bullies tend to be stupid, so this was hard for them.
If your individuality is all tied up in your physical appearance, try to develop your mind a bit. I am nonconformist in a thousand ways, each of which is more important than how i dress.
It’s only authoritarian if the teachers / administration also wear a similar uniform, but slightly different to denote rank.
Otherwise, it’s actually accidentally kind of socialistic, in that the divisions of class between your peers becomes less obvious, and there’s more cohesion with your fellow students versus those in authority. It’s easier for the students to rally together against something when they’re all wearing the same thing.
Otherwise, it’s actually beneficial to authoritarians to have no dress code, because student cliques would strengthen, and infighting would be more common.
For the USA, think about how both major parties use color to help separate people. If the colors of Democrats and Republicans were the same though, the division would be weaker.
Uniforms have historically been used to unify groups rather than to control them.
Socialism isn’t the opposite of authoritarian. It’s always authoritarian to mandate uniforms, it has benefits as you and others have outlined but you are stripping people of their individuality and mandating what people can do that’s classic authoritarianism
I think there’s a line where mandates are authoritarian and where they aren’t, and it comes down the house beneficial for society or a group it is, but in particular also how exclusionary it is. Your view on determining it by face value is too simple for this.
For example, if you mandate only Hispanic kids to wear uniforms, by your logic, that is more moral and less authoritarian because less students are being made to wear a uniform as opposed to all of them.
Yet, it’s obvious that is not the case, despite fitting into your statement.
Likewise, individualism has limits before it’s simply chaos too, and therefore should also be looked as to what point it instead brings harm. People here have, for example, listed many reasons not having a uniform code can be detrimental as well (wealth class divisions, strengthening of cliques, weakening of the student body’s efforts against things an administration will do).
Not to mention, even in your call for a lack of uniforms, you are still technically imposing mandates: not only against those who do wish to have them, but likely against what people want to actually wear. I doubt you want students going in boxers or bikinis for example.
And lastly, I’d like to mention that socialism is counter to authoritarianism. Authoritarianism might use some socialist aspects sometimes, but socialism itself isn’t in the same spectrum as authoritarianism.
Mandates are authoritarian it is a governing body putting its authority on to you. It’s the literal definition here is a dictionary definition if it helps
It’s also authoritarian to mandate don’t commit murder or don’t steal.
This is a mandate from a governing body that strips away freedoms that previously existed. No idea where this idea of morality is coming from but it sounds like you might be mixing up fascism with authoritarianism. Fascism is an extreme form of authoritarianism with a heavy right wing influence as well.
I am not calling for a lack of uniforms
Socialism has a state which makes mandates upon those it has power over again text book authoritarianism but THAT DOESNT MEAN ITS BAD
I am not saying all authority is bad as it is needed but if you make a sliding scale of how much authority a governing body has and you take a neutral scenario like a school and you add a mandate that forces students to follow a specific dress code that’s a sliding of the scale to auth and away from anarchy
divisions of class between your peers becomes less obvious
Nope! Kids will always find ways around that.
It’s still forcing people to wear something they don’t want.
School uniforms level the outward socioeconomic presentation of students.
If it weren’t school uniforms, then the oppositional-defiant disorder would present in some students another way. Not statistically relevant.
Not at all. On the contrary, I found them quite liberating, for 2 main reasons:
- not having to decide what to wear every day
- I was in a British private school, where students came from upper middle class to upper class backgrounds. A lot of the really rich students were shallow, superficial, and cruel. If we didn’t have uniforms we would have had a serious bullying problem against those who couldn’t afford to wear high end/designer brands.
The only downside is that we had to pay for the uniforms, and they were quite expensive compared to the awful materials they were made of. I had 3 sets on rotation.
Soccer uniforms have to be same color too it’s not “authoritarianism.”
Also idk about psychology but just a tiny bit of cohesion is much better over extreme individualism no?
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My post history and reputation will back that I am left as fuck, but I love uniforms because I hate clothes and all the stupid ass stipulations society has purposely and inadvertently put on them. Spending any more than 5 secs selecting what’s gonna cover me for the day is already too long.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate all the ideological arguments made against them, and don’t counter them, I simply yearn to live in a world where we’re ALL on the same team and working together, and what one wears means fuck and all.
I love uniforms because I hate clothes and all the stupid ass stipulations society has purposely and inadvertently put on them.
But uniforms still reflect the social expectations. I don’t trust the designers of the cloth to reflect everyone’s needs. My clothing for example needs to be flexible and durable enough for me to climb a tree and fall back down without worry.
Spending any more than 5 secs selecting what’s gonna cover me for the day is already too long.
There are 2 questions I ask myself when selecting cloth for the day:
- What is the weather like?
- Will I do something that could ruin a good T-shirt today?
I work in schools. Pre-uniforms, there were so so many girls who arrived in appropriate clothes and then removed the top layer. Children shouldnt wear clothes to school that are more revealing than what you’d see in a bar. Social media teaches them that the goal is attention and it doesn’t matter if it’s positive or negative.
Imo it’s much better than a cult of clothing brands.
Funny enough, my US schools didn’t regulate shoes, so kids would just get thousand-dollar designer shoes and “show off” anyways. Also, backpacks are not regulated. You could get bullied if your shoes or backback looks “cheap”.
Also, the Android vs iPhone thing.
Oh absolutely can be, and is absolutely often used as such.
However, as usual depends on the context. Properly subsidized it can help students not only gave greater pride in their appearance and success in classes if you aren’t having to worry about not getting good clothes or any that fit properly.
On the other hand it can be cripplingly over expensive and cheap ass.
Things a common grade school essay question which I think we’re helping OP answer
Nah, a kid would just chatgpt it these days.
I’m just remember how much I hated teachers and school admins because they called the gestapo (aka, USA Police) on me once after I defended myself against bullying.
What does that have to do with uniforms bigsad?
In elementary school we had a cheap (literally cheap, 5 euro) uniform that covered everything so it would protect the underneath clothes from inks, foods, spills. Also it didn’t matter if someone wore some expensive clothes as they were covered.
I noticed immediately from the first days in high school how something like that would have been useful as bullies would pick anyone about their clothing appearance. So there was an “unofficial” uniform, if you didn’t wear a brand name sweater then you were a loser to bully.
Now, I saw the elite schools uniform, expensive shirt under an expensive cardigan and a tie… that is ridiculous and I feel a way to take more money from the rich families as the expensive uniform can be bought only from them and need to purchase multiple sets to wear over a week
I think it is. It’s a capitalist attempt to break the spirit of the young and get people ready for having to wear uniforms for work.
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I think it’s more of an extension of the teenager fetish. School uniforms are something only school-aged children and teens wear regularly, so it’s become a trait associated with them.
There’s also some scenarios that are less problematic (at least imo). Some people have a general uniform fetish (cops, nurses, etc). And sometimes couples that want to roleplay themselves as students.
That being said, yeah there’s definitely some creepy fucks that can’t stop staring at teenagers. But I don’t think getting rid of student uniforms would put a noticable dent in it. That ship has already sailed. Keep in mind that french-style maid dresses aren’t really a thing anymire, and people still fetishize that. I doubt the school uniform fetish will go away even if every school in the world did away with them
No.
No not authoritarian
