I believe they should be mandatory in all schools public or private. They are good for a number of reasons.
Positives
*If you are poor and can not afford a lot of clothes, you only have to buy a few uniforms you can wear 3-4 times a week.
(Average price for most popular brands it can be 60-100$ an item)
*It removes class from schools, so no one can get picked on for having cheaper or more expensive clothes
*It creates unity when everyone of the same school have the same uniform
(Kind of like carrying an American flag on Fourth of July unites everyone for this holiday)
*It discourages bullying
From personal experience - it's a complete and total waste of time, money, effort - and serves no purpose what so ever. All these reasons 'to support it' are based on MYTH and the imaginative assumption that uniforms 'solve' social / school ails when they really just create them.
I oppose uniforms for countless reasons - mainly - because i had to tolerate the concept for so long and learned all the many down sides.
For one: they're often involving some impractical-to-keep-clean color like beige, yellow, or white. [Clearly people who support it don't have kids and have never had to get bright yellow paint out of a white shirt and beige pants].
They're highly expensive - even if you're not 'poor' - I have four children and the cost of uniforms in the past easily cost us over a THOUSAND for a single school year. On top of SCHOOL clothes - kids need just as many REGULAR clothes, too. So that at least doubles the average cost for clothes per child.
I live in a poor state (Arkansas) - so there's no such thing as 'class wars' that are so severe that the 'poor kids' are picked on while the 'rich kids' pick on them because of their
clothes. Yet many schools around here insisted on dress codes to solve this non-existent problem [many later redacted their requirements].
Besides - if regular clothes are imagined to be some source of
bullying - then wouldn't having to
buy uniforms from Goodwill when you're poor do the same? Trust me - I've done this A LOT. When an entire district is on the same uniform regimen then it makes those items impossible to find at such places. Hand-me-downs get worn until they're thoroughly worn OUT. So if it's meant to solve some sort of 'class / appearance' war it fails on this count alone.
They're ridiculously stringent - schools never seem satisfied just having COLOR requirements. They end up creating unnecessary rules like belts for boys (which my disabled son never could get 'straight' - which was a constant complaint form his special needs teacher). Some schools we've been to have even regulated FABRICS: no polyester - ??? No cotton - ??? They seemed to go above and beyond just to make it more complicated.
Further - all kids look alike. Now while this is the
idea - it created a total nightmare for us when my son (then 6) didn't come home from school. How to describe a kid that looks like everybody else? (rolls eyes).
Looking alike does NOT create unity - unity is a matter of community and school-spirit. Not appearance. It does NOT discourage bullying. Aside that - it creates a lot more work for the office aids and others to do just by naggling at student sand parents over 'wrong color - not tucked in - how many times do I have to!' type junk. So the parents are irritated with teachers / school official - - and the school officials in some places got so sick of it they ended it. So no unity comes from it what so ever.
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Now if schools created dynamic policies that were just strict dress codes rather than uniforms I might support that. You know: targeting fashion issues and trends that ARE problematic (like girls wearing tight leggings that show off their ass cheeks). I have no problem with length requirements for skirts and rules like 'no holes in shirts' and so on - but schools never seem to do THAT. They either are over-the-top-with-uniforms or not-much-at-all.
