School uniform
As the English schools head back - albeit with a high absence rate - the media have at last picked up on the scandalous cost of school uniform.
I'll come clean. I loathe school uniform.
I have unhappy memories of my mother going into debt every year with provvie cheques and menojes to be able to kit out 3 kids with all the stuff we had to have in order not to stand out at school as being different: blazers, pleated skirts, jumpers, shirts, trousers, ties (that nobody could knot), PE kit, schoolbags, etc. And the shoes - o my gawd, the shoes - that we grew out of in the middle of the school year and which my mother struggled to replace.
And, of course, whatever we did we were different. For a start, we were being educated in a Glasgow scheme school. That fact overshadowed just about everything we did.
School uniform is expensive. Thanks to a decade of austerity, a lot of families find their wages have declined. Some families are now dependent on local school uniform banks where volunteers persuade local supermarkets to donate old stock, gather donations from local people and try to bridge the poverty gap that families are experiencing.
Yes, I know all the arguments in favour of school uniform. It's supposed to be a great leveller. It's not. I've worked in a lot of schools. What kids wear is utterly irrelevant. Everybody knows which kids come from poorer areas, and which kids have well-off parents who have jobs, nice homes and cars and foreign holidays.
We're told it means people can pick kids out when they're out in public. It seems that the public need to be able to pick kids out because the little sods will be up to no good out there. Then the public can phone the school the kids come from or write to their councillors complaining about bad behaviour among school kids. Cynical or what? I don't mean me - I mean this being used as a reason to shove kids into school uniform. I have occasionally observed young people in school uniform doing good things - help elderly people, etc - and have written to their schools to congratulate them. But I have a feeling I'm in a minority.
As a pupil, I was often taken out to movies and concerts. At public events, it was clear to us that the posher the uniform - the more braid on the blazers - the worse the behaviour was. But I'll bet that was all just high spirits...
For some reason, older members of the public assume the worst about children and young people. A friend of mine, who sadly died last year, bought a flat just yards from a 1400-pupil secondary school. He spent a lot of time getting worked up about what the kids got up to at lunchtime. This was one of the busiest areas of Glasgow, but he assumed all the vandalism he saw was due to school kids. They dropped the litter, caused trouble on the buses, got into fights in the street, etc. Of course, it wasn't true.
Apparently, uniform makes it easy to get ready in the morning. What, you mean kids are all so well off for clothes they would dither over what to wear every day? My experience of kids is that teenage boys often have to be wrestled out of the hoodie and jeans outfits they normally wear, while girls are much more thoughtful and, even without a uniform, will dress smartly. A friend's daughter has just gone Goth. I've no problem with that but I bet the very traditional secondary school she attends is now wasting hours of everyone's time trying to change her style.
There's frankly something creepy about insisting on dressing small children and teenage boys as if they were little soldiers. Dressing girls up that way is just weird. But then, I'm cynical enough to believe that putting girls in uniform is really about hiding their sex from male teachers who might just be sexual predators.
At least let's have the decency to admit this is almost entirely about class. Uniform doesn't remove class distinctions. In fact, it emphasises them. Poor parents struggle to meet their kids' needs. Letting them struggle to buy useless and very expensive uniforms is not acceptable.
I'll come clean. I loathe school uniform.
I have unhappy memories of my mother going into debt every year with provvie cheques and menojes to be able to kit out 3 kids with all the stuff we had to have in order not to stand out at school as being different: blazers, pleated skirts, jumpers, shirts, trousers, ties (that nobody could knot), PE kit, schoolbags, etc. And the shoes - o my gawd, the shoes - that we grew out of in the middle of the school year and which my mother struggled to replace.
And, of course, whatever we did we were different. For a start, we were being educated in a Glasgow scheme school. That fact overshadowed just about everything we did.
School uniform is expensive. Thanks to a decade of austerity, a lot of families find their wages have declined. Some families are now dependent on local school uniform banks where volunteers persuade local supermarkets to donate old stock, gather donations from local people and try to bridge the poverty gap that families are experiencing.
Yes, I know all the arguments in favour of school uniform. It's supposed to be a great leveller. It's not. I've worked in a lot of schools. What kids wear is utterly irrelevant. Everybody knows which kids come from poorer areas, and which kids have well-off parents who have jobs, nice homes and cars and foreign holidays.
We're told it means people can pick kids out when they're out in public. It seems that the public need to be able to pick kids out because the little sods will be up to no good out there. Then the public can phone the school the kids come from or write to their councillors complaining about bad behaviour among school kids. Cynical or what? I don't mean me - I mean this being used as a reason to shove kids into school uniform. I have occasionally observed young people in school uniform doing good things - help elderly people, etc - and have written to their schools to congratulate them. But I have a feeling I'm in a minority.
As a pupil, I was often taken out to movies and concerts. At public events, it was clear to us that the posher the uniform - the more braid on the blazers - the worse the behaviour was. But I'll bet that was all just high spirits...
For some reason, older members of the public assume the worst about children and young people. A friend of mine, who sadly died last year, bought a flat just yards from a 1400-pupil secondary school. He spent a lot of time getting worked up about what the kids got up to at lunchtime. This was one of the busiest areas of Glasgow, but he assumed all the vandalism he saw was due to school kids. They dropped the litter, caused trouble on the buses, got into fights in the street, etc. Of course, it wasn't true.
Apparently, uniform makes it easy to get ready in the morning. What, you mean kids are all so well off for clothes they would dither over what to wear every day? My experience of kids is that teenage boys often have to be wrestled out of the hoodie and jeans outfits they normally wear, while girls are much more thoughtful and, even without a uniform, will dress smartly. A friend's daughter has just gone Goth. I've no problem with that but I bet the very traditional secondary school she attends is now wasting hours of everyone's time trying to change her style.
There's frankly something creepy about insisting on dressing small children and teenage boys as if they were little soldiers. Dressing girls up that way is just weird. But then, I'm cynical enough to believe that putting girls in uniform is really about hiding their sex from male teachers who might just be sexual predators.
At least let's have the decency to admit this is almost entirely about class. Uniform doesn't remove class distinctions. In fact, it emphasises them. Poor parents struggle to meet their kids' needs. Letting them struggle to buy useless and very expensive uniforms is not acceptable.
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