My little neighborhood sandwich shop was invaded today by a horde of high school students from a school I'd never heard of. The students were more diverse than the neighborhood.
If you're being as honest as Juan Williams, under such circumstances you might expect to see little signs of concern — those side glances, women securing their handbags under the table — that you see from older people when a group of teenagers suddenly appears.
There was none of that. None. Part of the reason was that the teenagers happened to be well behaved. But the real reason, I think, was the sweatshirts and T-shirts they all wore proclaiming their attendance at Pacifica Christian High School. Oh, yes, and collared shirts and tennis shirts and khaki shorts or skirts, with fashion accessories limited to the occasional scarf.
This is the uniform of the relatively new Christian high school around the corner, which has grown each year since it was founded just a few years ago. And it is big enough now to have enough seniors to be noticed at the sandwich shop.
A uniform says a lot. It communicates, immediately, that these are good kids, not gang kids, kids trying to get an education, not protect turf. The first thing Green Dot Public Schools (whose board I'm on) did when we took over Locke High School in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts was put the students in very similar uniforms. I joked with my son that if a gang ever wants to take over Brentwood, they should show up wearing Pacifica Christian sweaters. They would be treated with great courtesy.
Most of us have uniforms.
The good ones — Hillary Clinton's black suit, when she finally found it, with the rotating colored shirts — not only help you get dressed faster in the morning, but also convey to people who you are and what you want them to think of you.
A black suit says serious and smart; colored shirts say approachable and fun. Hillary. Baggy shorts hanging low and the rest say gang member. The only thing crazier than gang members dressing like gang members is kids who aren't gang members trying to dress as if they are.
Bad uniforms — and they are everywhere today, from fifth graders to young attorneys — send signals that are utterly inappropriate to the person, place or time. For example, 11-year-old "designer queen" sex pots. (No, I am not suggesting any excuse for pedophilia; only that if you don't want your daughter to convey sexual signals, why dress her that way?)
I once asked one of the proverbial "other mothers" whose kid was far more stylishly dressed than I was (and I was doing better than usual that day) whether she agreed that how we dress our kids (or let them dress) is much more about values than about how much you can afford or the hottest styles. She found it a rather shocking notion.
The right uniform — a blue sweatshirt from a Christian school that upon further inspection inculcates the very values that good stereotyping would associate with an urban Protestant school — paves your way in the world, sending the right message about who you are.
The wrong one? In some parts, it can get you killed.
To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM
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4 Comments | Post Comment
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Just putting a uniform on a thug doesn't remove the behavior. Most of the kids who go to public schools are raised by parents who don't care about behavior, can't aford a better educational environment for their kids or don't want to subject their kids to a more disiplined (religious) environment. That's a good reason for school vouchers and dismantling the DOE.
I wonder where Susan stands on that subject?
Comment: #1
Posted by: Early
Wed Jan 5, 2011 8:27 AM
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There are numerous studies that back up this article. Kids in school uniforms have higher grades and fewer disciplinary problems than kids in non-uniformed schools, including a large percentage of private schools. Bravo to those boards brave enough to make uniforms mandatory -- and bravo to the students cited above for presenting themselves so admirably.
Comment: #2
Posted by: Honor Girl
Thu Jan 6, 2011 4:36 AM
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Kids in uniforms in 'government schools' reminds me of the brownshirts.
Comment: #3
Posted by: Early
Thu Jan 6, 2011 6:41 AM
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Here's yet another reason why I don't get down with limousine liberalism.
School uniforms just don't work. They are a part of the establishment's craven efforts to profit from mass hysteria and white supremacist thinking. Got poor schools? Kids dressing like Bloods and Crips? Here's an idea: slap on some uniforms on them, and watch everything get better! That's the logic, the bill of goods school sysytems, education pseudo-advocates, and corporate America sell to us everyday. And we fall for it hook, line, and sinker.
Uniforms are meant to convey a standard. But when you have hundreds of manufacturers constructing thousands of garments, with various materials and levels of quality, where is the standard? If everyone is to appear the same, how do you account for the kids who get their gear from Lord and Taylor, and the ones who have to make do with walmart? If the whole concept of uniforms is to eliminate social distractions (and class distinctions), do you NOT think that kids, as resourceful as they are, won't come up with ways to diffrentiate themselves (you know, the whole gang assumption)?
Izod, walmart, Soffe and many other manufacturers are making money hand over fist because schools are mandating uniformity over quality, peddled by the same people who cried the "if everyone is special, then no one is" line. I don't get it. Quality, achievement and pride are NOT inherent in a uniform, nor can competence, integrity, and character be surmised by the way someone walks out of his front door. And if mandating uniforms is a answer to all of our social problems, they why did that ticket agent at the airport blow off your complaint? Or the kid in the drive through window carelessly sling out that cold Egg McMuffin you choked on this morning (and didn't say thank you!), and that store associate pretend not to know where the hardware department is when all alonge she never gave a damn to start with (and it's not her department anyway)?
Uniforms exhibit how we perceive one's social standing as much as they define an ideal. They are also a means of control, which I suspect is why people like them so much in schools. But ask people like Susan Estrich: do YOUR kids wear uniforms? And if they had to get them at Target instead of Nordstrom, although you can easily afford purchasing them from the latter, would you acquiesce to the school board's whims?
It seems funny to me that many of the schools that enjoy the freest expression, highest quality of education, and best test scores don't have uniforms. Strong dress codes, yes. But not uniforms. Maybe they were just fortunate enough to have good teachers and good kids. Maybe they're just wealthier and can enjoy greater resources.
Maybe it's the culture.
Think about that. Change the CULTURE of mediocrity, the CULTURE of apathy, and the CULTURE of defeatism, and you might get the RESULTS that better-performing schools produce. I know, it's no as much a feel-good, superficial fix as school uniforms, but what the hell, right? Granted, it's just an opinion, but when there are just as many studies that show school uniforms are at best marginally effective as they are successful, my opinion is as good as any other's. But I digress; it smacks of nothing short of elitism for Estrich to judge a person's worth by what a person wears and not how he carries himself.
Comment: #4
Posted by: Therren Dunham
Thu Jan 6, 2011 2:00 PM
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