What Are the Reasons Why School Uniforms Are Bad?

By Staff Writer | Last Updated August 4, 2015

School uniforms are considered a nuisance by some people because they are expensive for many parents to afford, and they force children to conform to a single standard and disappear into a crowd of sameness at school, explains About.com. Uniforms can also create problems for children who have skin sensitivities to the materials present in buttons and zippers or who are allergic to certain fabrics.

School uniforms force children to wear clothes that do not suit their preferred form of expression and do not allow students to congregate into individual cliques as freely as they might hope to in schools that do not enforce uniform codes. Advocates for school uniform enforcement argue that this helps to place the students’ focus solely on education so that they are not preoccupied with socializing while on campus.

As The Guardian explains, school uniforms seem to impact young girls more negatively than boys, because the guidelines for girls are more focused on body image. Many girls are uncomfortable wearing skirts but are forced to do so by school dress codes. Alternatively, girls who wish to be a bit more daring in their fashion choices are constrained to wearing quite-modest clothing. When the rules are even slightly broken, girls run the risk of being singled out from their peers and even expelled, which many people believe to be a severe reaction to a frivolous matter.