Students, teachers, and parents alike have protested the dress codes and school uniforms in schools today due to many claims that they negatively impact the education of students across the nation.  School boards state that the dress codes are for the safety of the students and to reduce "distractions" in the learning environment.  But many female students are considered the "distractions" for their male peers, implying the sexual objectification of women.  Uniforms themselves foster the concept that a woman's education is of less importance than a man's because most schools with uniforms require girls to wear a skirt.  If the student refuses or violates any additional form of the clothing regulations, they are sent home and lose a day of valuable education.  Changing the uniforms will not help the students if they do not feel secure in what they are wearing since this is a vulnerable time in their lives and many girls lack confidence in themselves; instead, there should be a movement towards discarding uniforms all together.  Restricting what girls wear will not get to the root of the objectification in our society, instead it obstructs the individuality of the students and leaves them unable to comfortably and safely express themselves.  The double standard created in the school systems tells female students they are not the priority and their education isn't as important as the clothes they are wearing.  For these reasons, uniforms and confining dress codes should be abolished completely and replaced with education directed towards the young men and women in schools, teaching them how to respect both their own and other people's bodies.

Dress codes and uniforms are intended by the school districts to decrease the amount of distraction time wasted by males and females during puberty, level the playing field to reduce the social stigma of lower income, and increase the efficiency of the school by reducing the efforts put into subduing disobedience.  However, they have the opposite effect.  Many schools require uniforms because they believe it will help get rid of social pressure to dress a certain way.  Everyone wearing the same thing, they reason, will eliminate the need students feel to fit in by wearing name brand clothes, shoes, and accessories.  But, uniforms usually only require clothes and shoes to be the same.  Accessories such as headbands, bracelets, belts, and backpacks can still be customized to the student's wishes (or income level), so the effort to create equality is wasted.  Another argument is that schools believe they will not need to discipline their students as much because the dress code will prevent students from acting out.  But, the logic is flawed: stricter rules need people to enforce them, so a strict dress code will require more attention, time, staff, and money to enforce.  And as for reducing distractions, there is a flaw in the assumption that the way girls dress is a distraction for males (and vice versa).  If girls' clothes are the difference between the academic success or failure of males in the school system, that puts much more pressure on girls to uphold a distraction-free environment.  Girls who begin puberty early are forced into the mindset of hiding their bodies and being ashamed rather than rejoicing in the new season of life.  When girls are told to cover up or put on more clothes, they are being given the message that their clothing choices hold the futures of all males.  However, girls are not the ones responsible for maintaining an academic environment.  If a boy cannot control his eyes, hands, or other part of his body, it is his conscious choice to not pay attention, not the girl's choice, and it should be his responsibility to remedy the situation.  Therefore, dress codes and uniforms are not only ineffective in the functions the schools intend for them, but can also cause additional issues.

Girls are targeted by dress codes specifically while boys are passed over as the victims of a sexualized world.  Phoebe Eligon-Jones, the gateway coordinator at Benjamin N. Cardozo High School in Queens, N.Y says "If a girl comes in half naked, it's natural for boys to turn and look." (Halkidis).  This kind of statement puts the blame on women and girls for their bodies, telling them to be ashamed of their distractions to males and that they should cover themselves up to prevent issues.  The message is that girls' bodies are dangerous and if they are not hidden under sufficient clothes, the sexual nature of female bodies will drive males to uncontrollably force sexual favors onto them.  But in fact, it is not female bodies that are dangerous, but rather this message!  Women cannot be held accountable for things they cannot change - they did not ask to be born female and it is not their fault that they have reproductive organs.  Placing blame on body parts rather than the culture puts girls down during one of the most insecure times of their lives - the beginning of puberty.  The American Psychological Association found that the blatant sexualization can cause "lower self-esteem, negative mood and depressive symptoms" as well as "diminished sexual health" (Halkidis).  Laura Bates agrees when she says "I can't help feeling there is a powerful irony in accusing a girl of being 'provocative'  --  in projecting that societal assumption onto her adolescent body  --  before she is even old enough to have learned how to correctly spell the word" (Bates).  She argues that placing preconceived notions on young girls is not only damaging but also very unrealistic.  Girls should be treated as what they are - developing young women who have a right to dress in a way that shows their individuality and personality.  They should not have to be restricted by a male's lack of self-control.  And there is a huge double standard between male and female dress codes.  For example, one girl told the story this way: "I got dress coded at my school for wearing shorts. After I left the principal's office with a detention I walked past another student wearing a shirt depicting two stick figures: the male holding down the female's head in his crotch and saying 'good girls swallow'. Teachers walked right past him and didn't say a thing" (Bates).  This is just one example of how girls are forced to wear clothes that suppress their individuality, but do not have anything openly sexual on them, while males are allowed to let their lust run rampant with their clothes and actions.  How can males go unpunished for this disobedience?  The male in this story was more at fault for the saying on his shirt than the girl was for wearing shorts, but she was given detention and he walked right on past.  This is just one of many examples of the double standard given to girls and young women in schools.

Requiring girls to wear a uniform supports the idea that a girl's education is less important than a male's education as well as some schools requiring girls to wear skirts which can be uncomfortable for the girl.  These assumptions that women are prone to being sexualized and are a part of the rape culture where they are "asking for it" by wearing something that shows more skin are wrong and dangerous.  School should be a place to learn academics, for both males and females and should protect the students' right to express their personality.  Rosa Tully puts it this way, "For girls who are going through the delights of puberty, a place that offers this sanctity and support is integral, as attempting to deal with the issues discussed in the feminist group alone can be extremely difficult" (Ringrose).  Self-confidence decreases during puberty anyway, but adding the shame factor because of the clothes they wear is not going to make school a safe environment for girls.  Placing blame on girls for their bodies is not getting at the real problem.  The real issue is in a society that says that males cannot control themselves in the presence of a female.

Another issue with the argument that girls are a distraction for boys in school is that gender identity is not always straight-forward.  Uniforms that require girls to wear skirts can harm rather than help the problem.  "Skirts allow for the exposure of underwear that covers buttocks and genitals; a possibility that has been commercialized and popularized in many ways through popular culture. Even where they do not reveal body parts, they can still be productive of the sexualization of young women" (Happel).  Skirts are a constant reminder of the sexual nature of girls' bodies and requiring skirts does not allow girls who are fluid in their gender identity to experiment and find their true selves.  Uniforms force students to conform to certain societal gender roles that may negatively impact their emotional and social development.

Slut shaming is also another huge issue in the debate about dress codes and uniforms.  This is " the practice of punishing or making character judgments about people, usually girls and women, based on their sexual activity or on assumptions about their sexual activity" (Kohli).  Girls are told that their clothes reflect their sexual activity, not their respect for the beauty of their bodies.  What irony!  Campaigns across the world work to increase women's self esteem, but in the infancy of womanhood in schools, girls are taught to fear their bodies and punished when they express their confidence through their attire.  An outfit does not necessarily reflect the sexual activity of that person and calling someone a "slut" will only cause shame and fear, not self love and respect.

Belinda Luscombe offers the opposite opinion that school uniforms (not dress codes) are the saving grace of the next generation.  She argues that they give extra power to the school staff because they hold the rule of absolute right versus absolute wrong - either the student is in uniform or the student is breaking the uniform.  There is no wishy-washy "too short", "fingertip length", or "too much cleavage" and other subjective terms like that.  She also believes that since uniforms are not usually changed from year to year, they can be resold to benefit the school or the school can buy a large number of uniforms at cost and sell them with a little profit to put towards educational programs.  So uniforms, after the first few years, could become one of the main supporters for the school's programs that do not get enough funding on their own, like extracurricular classes and clubs.  Her next point is that school uniforms help build better citizens because the children are more worried about education than about the clothes they are wearing.  Also, uniforms are easily recognizable and so the students are held to a higher standard - "the local community knows where that kid belongs. It's harder for kids to skip school or get into trouble outside school. They're too easily spotted. At the boys' school near mine, the young men were obliged to pick up any litter on the street, even if they did not drop it. They were also obliged to doff their hats to any car that stopped to let them cross the road" (Luscombe).  This anecdote refers to a time when common courtesy was not extended even with regular people.  But, instead of relying on uniforms to teach responsibility and letting an inanimate object shape the lives of school children, teachers should instead just do their job and teach the children themselves.  Wearing a uniform will not make a moral child, but a child sitting under good instruction for year after year just might.  As for Belinda Luscombe's point that school uniforms will help improve discipline, she is relying on the results of a study done in 1995 in Long Beach, California.  Students were given uniforms to wear for a year and the statistics were: "crime rate dropped by 90%, assault was down by 80%, vandalism by 70%, and suspensions were down by 90%" (DNews).  But this study has been replicated many times and never gotten the same results.  So it looks to be that the Long Beach experiment was more of a case study - the circumstances in that particular school help to explain why the numbers were so improved.  However, the problem is that schools are still relying on that one study to provide evidence for the use of school uniforms and strict dress codes when in fact, reading scores improved a little, math scores stayed the same, and science scores even went down after schools started using uniforms.  So students are not benefitting from uniforms, discipline takes more staff and time to enforce, and uniforms can also make the transition through puberty harder, especially for girls.  A National Education Policy Center puts it this way, 

"Dress code referrals are especially time-consuming because they often involve students changing clothes or waiting for parents to bring them new clothes. It can sometimes take more than two hours for a parent to leave work, stop by their house, grab clothes, and bring them to school. This is valuable class time that is lost for the student" (Kate).  

By taking students out of school just because of a dress code violation, the school is telling the student that their education is really not that important, that the student does not really need to learn.  And if the school does not emphasize learning, why should the students care about it either?  Strict dress codes and uniforms foster the concept that the school's image (uniformity and strict obedience) are more important than the actual material that the students should be learning.

Achievement does not improve with uniforms, and may help to cause mental health issues for teen girls.  After a long-term study was done for primary and secondary school aged children, "the results are remarkably consistent across both sets of data and support one general conclusion: There is little evidence that uniforms improve achievement in schools" (Yeung).  So, academic achievement does not improve, however girls are being taken out of class or asked to leave school to change because she is violating a school policy by wearing the incorrect clothing; it takes away her valuable education and demonstrates a male priority in schools.  Girls are treated as the underprivileged minority and discriminated against because of their bodies.  However, clothing should not be a factor in any person's education and should not affect their ability to stay in class if they are not wearing the "appropriate" attire.

Schools are not motivating children to stay in school and learn - they are causing them to disengage and despise school.  In the conclusion of a sociological study done by Ohio University, Edward Morris writes, "My observations suggest that students targeted for disciplinary reform can internalize the discipline aimed at them, and while for some this may lead to self-regulation and complicity, for others it could produce resistance and disengagement from school" (Morris).  To avoid teaching students these harmful values and making them feel inferior, school systems should discard uniforms and strict dress codes in favor of actual education.  Discipline problems, low attendance, and the overall lack of respect can be fixed. Schools can bring in police officers to help them see the results of the choices they make at a young age or even take the children on field trips to the local disciplinary system (i.e. the Department of Juvenile Justice) to see firsthand what happens when students and young people break rules.  Sexual health classes can be very helpful in improving the self-confidence and knowledge of puberty and the changes that happen during that time.  Instead of restricting students' freedom and undermining their education, if schools will focus on improving the style of teaching and the lessons the children are learning, not only will the problems uniforms hope to fix be solved, but the schools will also become a happier, safer place for everyone.

