Surely there are more important things that hair colour ?

[jean]

I wonder what the uniform for headmistresses is? Surely a gown & mortarboard would be appropriate?

It's all a question of image.

In the least academic school I ever taught in - a secondary modern in a LA that retained selection - the senior staff wore academic gowns (though not hoods, obviously).

And as I've pointed out above, school uniform is (among other things) an attempt to say Look at us - we're every bit as good as that school down the road, that you have to pass an examination/pay to get in to.

some adults never got over their child-hood battles with 'school', so they carry the battle on with through their children.

This is true.

The answer sometimes advanced on this board seems to be that we should strive for a situation where there is no authority, and therefore no need for anyone to defer to, nor opportunity for anyone to rebel against it. Then we would all exist in a state of perfect happiness.

I am quite interested in ah's little anti-uniform rebellion. I wonder if he would have got away with it if large numbers of boys had followed his example? Or - probably more pertinent - if the headmaster had not recognised that as an intelligent pupil likely to bring glory to the school (and bump up its position in league tables and OFSTED ratings, if such things had existed) he had better be retained, whatever the challenge to school discipline?

.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Many schools opt for a uniform that essentially a sweatshirt and trousers. The more expensive blazers are the darling of Michael G***'s academies.

[jean]

Sweatshirts are for primaries.

All the secondaries round here without exception, whether academies or not, have blazers. They're pretty cheap these days, being made of polyester, and machine washable.

I'm slightly puzzled by the fashion for kilt-like skirts for girls in various pretend tartans, even though we're nowhere near Scotland; I suspect the reason is that they don't lend themselves to being turned over multiple times at the waistband.

[MrGongGong]

Blazers ?
WHY ?

http://thumbs1.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mbjqG_1Xq1k4ljX37SCDTxQ.jpg

Can't you see how clever this chap is by his clothes ?

http://www.burtongrammar.co.uk/wp-content/images/09/LesSimpson2.jpg

[Serial_Apologist]

It's all a question of image.

In the least academic school I ever taught in - a secondary modern in a LA that retained selection - the senior staff wore academic gowns (though not hoods, obviously).

And as I've pointed out above, school uniform is (among other things) an attempt to say Look at us - we're every bit as good as that school down the road, that you have to pass an examination/pay to get in to.

The uniforms issue is just a substitute for critiqueing school's inculcatory role in capitalist society, to which, rather as with examples of recycled style and nostalgia, uniformity stands in mixed metaphorical relationship.

This is true.

Indeed: nothing happens either to confirm or disconfirm youthful dissidence, which is all put down to immaturity and lack of experience.

The answer sometimes advanced on this board seems to be that we should strive for a situation where there is no authority, and therefore no need for anyone to defer to, nor opportunity for anyone to rebel against it. Then we would all exist in a state of perfect happiness.

Is it not how authority is exercised, rather than its necessity, that feeds rebellion? My own small way rebellion (bunking off compulsory CCF and sports among other things), was a response to the "do as I say not as do" power relations imposed by prefecture and common room trumping any pointlesssness in said rules; only later did one understand this as an expression of wider class relations, but without it one would presumably have gone on to become just a compliant, one-dimensional exemplar of "normality".

I am quite interested in ah's little anti-uniform rebellion. I wonder if he would have got away with it if large numbers of boys had followed his example? Or - probably more pertinent - if the headmaster had not recognised that as an intelligent pupil likely to bring glory to the school (and bump up its position in league tables and OFSTED ratings, if such things had existed) he had better be retained, whatever the challenge to school discipline?.

Well we don't know, unless ahinton tells us; but one thing that is clear is that The Powers That Be will always deflect rebellion by buying off the miscreants with praise and blandishments. There is a scene in Lindsay Anderson's "If" where the three schoolboy rebels are brought before the liberal-minded headmaster who praises their sense of initiative and adventure.

[teamsaint]

Sweatshirts are for primaries.

All the secondaries round here without exception, whether academies or not, have blazers. They're pretty cheap these days, being made of polyester, and machine washable.

I'm slightly puzzled by the fashion for kilt-like skirts for girls in various pretend tartans, even though we're nowhere near Scotland; I suspect the reason is that they don't lend themselves to being turned over multiple times at the waistband.

I think that the girls at SWGS in Salisbury have found a way round that..!! (my daughter was there before anybody asks...............)

[Richard Barrett]

In a secondary modern in LA

Wow! (sorry, I'm picking up bad habits)

As you say, uniforms are used as a dodgy sort of metaphor for educational excellence, because it's what the posh schools do. Some professions (the police, the fire service etc.) require uniforms in order to distinguish their wearers from civilians. I don't think children come into this category. Therefore I see absolutely no reason why they should be made to wear uniforms. The idea that they are economically levelling is not true. When I was at school (a comprehensive with a uniform) it was perfectly clear who came from an affluent background and who didn't. Also if you wanted to go to the pub after school you had to go home first and change, which was time-consuming and inconvenient in many ways.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Sweatshirts are for primaries.

.

Not around this sector of the barren wasteland.

[ahinton]

I am quite interested in ah's little anti-uniform rebellion. I wonder if he would have got away with it if large numbers of boys had followed his example? Or - probably more pertinent - if the headmaster had not recognised that as an intelligent pupil likely to bring glory to the school (and bump up its position in league tables and OFSTED ratings, if such things had existed) he had better be retained, whatever the challenge to school discipline?

Well, I don't know about that! Few did follow my example, as it happens, but the parameters of acceptability of dress were fairly obvious to me following that exchange and, had I or anyone else subsequently transgressed them, I suspect that it would have been back to that school uniform as soon as you could say "Latin". I didn't see it as a "rebellion" per se, however; I simply didn't understand the point of a rule which determined that attending the school presumed some kind of need to dress as though a representative of it and felt it incumbent upon me to say so when asked; I thought that the purpose of attending school was to learn, not to act as some kind of an identifiable agent thereof. For the record, the outcome no more made a difference to school discipline than did I "bring glory to the school"!

[ahinton]

As you say, uniforms are used as a dodgy sort of metaphor for educational excellence, because it's what the posh schools do. Some professions (the police, the fire service etc.) require uniforms in order to distinguish their wearers from civilians. I don't think children come into this category. Therefore I see absolutely no reason why they should be made to wear uniforms.

Absolutely right; that's exactly why I couldn't see the point of wearing one at school. What good (or ill!) could it have done for anyone seeing me on my way to or from school dressed in one to be able to tell which school I attended? - what business would it have been of theirs? The school didn't "own" me or have shares in me, nor did there exist a legal contract obliging its attendees to dress in a specific way prescribed by it so, as far as I could tell, the whole uniform business had its basis in nothing more than some kind of sop to "tradition". Likewise, as a colleague of mine at that school said to me at the time, no one had chided him for looking non-European (he was from Iran) or for being 1.8m in height at the age of 14, so what's the supposed big deal about silly caps and meaningless motto badges just so as to look "the same" as everyone else at the school?

[Serial_Apologist]

Wow! (sorry, I'm picking up bad habits)

As you say, uniforms are used as a dodgy sort of metaphor for educational excellence, because it's what the posh schools do. Some professions (the police, the fire service etc.) require uniforms in order to distinguish their wearers from civilians. I don't think children come into this category. Therefore I see absolutely no reason why they should be made to wear uniforms. The idea that they are economically levelling is not true. When I was at school (a comprehensive with a uniform) it was perfectly clear who came from an affluent background and who didn't. Also if you wanted to go to the pub after school you had to go home first and change, which was time-consuming and inconvenient in many ways.

I suppose wearing a school uniform would be OK if the aim were to circumvent peer group pressure to comply with fashion criteria, and provided the ******* thing were supplied free by the school; but doubtless there will be people who argue that one is interfering with a principle very useful to capitalism's inculcation of the "competitive spirit", namely learning to deal with bullies.

[ahinton]

I suppose wearing a school uniform would be OK if the aim were to circumvent peer group pressure to comply with fashion criteria

Presumably only provided that the uniform concerned did not itself "comply with fashion criteria"...

and provided the ******* thing were supplied free by the school

You mean free at the point of acquisition by its wearer-to-be? It couldn't be supplied "free" per se and I suspect that, if it were indeed funded by the state education service, there'd be widespread howls of protest about taxpayers' investments in the education budget being misappropriated for the provision of clothing rather than that of education services!

but doubtless there will be people who argue that one is interfering with a principle very useful to capitalism's inculcation of the "competitive spirit", namely learning to deal with bullies.

I don't quite see the connection. There was some evidence of bullying at the school that I attended, though fortunately not much. I'm not sure that there's a credible connection between school uniform policy and bullying, but perhaps that's not what you meant...

[Serial_Apologist]

I don't quite see the connection. There was some evidence of bullying at the school that I attended, though fortunately not much. I'm not sure that there's a credible connection between school uniform policy and bullying, but perhaps that's not what you meant...

I was thinking of uniforms serving to circumvent when school kids are allowed to battle among themselves over who's wearing the coolest attire in some kind of simulacrum of the will to survive.

[amateur51]

I was thinking of uniforms serving to circumvent when school kids are allowed to battle among themselves over who's wearing the coolest attire in some kind of simulacrum of the will to survive.

Better/worse still if pupils had started putting razor blades along the edge of the peaks of their compulsory school caps as weapons, as in BBC's popular Peaky Blinders series...

[Risorgimento]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ed...y-9842189.html

It's called 'standards' but then I wouldn't expect you to understand that.