Training | 2010.08.31
Bring back the blazers | Lynsey Hanley
Michael Gove has missed a trick. Quality uniforms for all give pupils respect for school and themselves
Reading Paul O\'Grady\'s autobiography over the holidays I was struck by a photo of his Aunty Chris, a bus conductor in the 1960s, standing in front of a Birkenhead bus with her driver, Bill Casey. They are slim, contented, absolutely themselves, and both are wearing smart uniforms. His aunt\'s, writes O\'Grady, "could easily have been mistaken for the work of a bespoke tailor".
I thought of this photo again when reading about the Local Government Association\'s plea that schools converting to academies in September should "show restraint" when making plans to change uniforms, mindful of the financial burden on parents. Two things seemed obvious: school uniforms need to be as smart as possible; and they should be issued, free, to each pupil at the beginning of the school year.
Good uniforms confer dignity. They give the wearer a chance to take themselves seriously and to convey to others that they ought to be treated with respect. The fact that they\'re issued as standard, for free, doesn\'t alter that perception. To give examples, the elegant, quasi-medical tunic worn by Boots shop assistants, and the sharp grey suit worn by guards and ticket officers on the London Overground, dignify the wearer.
Bad uniforms – cheap, second-rate ones – diminish everyone. Poor quality school uniforms, in particular, embody a school ethos that expects little of its students or their parents. Polo shirts and sweatshirts may be cheap and easy to wash, but they\'re not a uniform designed for unseen benefits – the benefit of being able to look at yourself in a mirror and say, "Yeah, I do look smart", of allowing yourself to think, "Perhaps I\'m not thick after all". Enforcement will be easier but will mean less.
These are most often the uniforms worn by children in largely working-class schools, ostensibly because they\'re "more practical" – cheaper for parents and easier to enforce. The less obvious inference is that students may as well prepare for a lifetime of wearing "practical" clothes. By contrast, I regularly walk past students at the successful Mossbourne academy in east London, wearing grey blazers and ties, who, in the very act of wearing such a uniform, are transcending their circumstances.
It\'s precisely because uniforms are presented to you to wear, without choice, that a sense of freedom in other areas is unleashed. Anti-authoritarians, keen on connecting school uniforms with some hidden state agenda to keep the populace compliant, tend to work from the assumption that all order is destructive to the soul. You cannot learn to the best of your ability in a chaotic environment – whether at home, at school, or both.
There is nothing more shameful or frustrating than to turn up at school, desperate for adults to give you the means to become a useful person, to find either that they cannot keep order or that they expect so little of you that they can\'t be bothered to try. The same goes for uniform: if a code is only half-enforced, it reinforces the notion that you, your aims and by extension, your community, are not worth taking seriously.
Uniforms don\'t cause the wearer to disappear: conversely, the better it is, the more chance you have to assert yourself within its limits. It doesn\'t stultify identity, it bolsters it. Students of private and public schools take this for granted. You have to wonder how long it will be before state-school pupils are treated with the same degree of respect, and, in so doing, to treat themselves as people worth respecting.
In his urge to set schools and parents "free" from state control , Michael Gove may have missed a trick. In funding proper and dignifying school uniforms directly from his budget, he could do more for state education than any other half-baked idea currently on his desk.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]e-school-uniforms-michael-gove
