By Selwyn Duke
Back when I used to have a real job (OK, almost real), I would pass the local secondary on my commute home from work. It could be a sight to behold. If the most bizarre elements of your average American high school congregated in one room, it would, to steal a Pat Buchanan line, look like the bar scene in Star Wars.
Speaking of entertainment, I remember a Leave it to Beaver episode wherein Beaver ran afoul of school rules by wearing a sweat shirt bearing the image of a multi-eyed monster. It was tame by today's standards -- wouldn't even raise a contemporary eyebrow. Of course, this was the 1950s. The repressed, staid, puritanical 50s, when I wasn't even a twinkle in my father's eye.
Oh, how I long for those days.
We've come a long way, the wrong way. That's what happens when you start that snowball.
Gravity, you know.
Once you fancy that tradition is tyrannical and start dispensing with it, once you set that precedent, where does it end? First the periphery of the culture is eaten away, and then the layer within is subject to attack. That is then destroyed, and the process continues until the very kernel of propriety and morality is imperiled.
Welcome to 2008.
So it starts with a goofy sweatshirt, devolves into Mohawks, purple hair, tattoos and body piercing, and the next thing you know, students have plates in their lips and earlobes as they go on a field trip and beat a chicken under the moonlight.
Although I don't cast it as a panacea, this is why I believe in school uniforms. And don't dismiss it as merely a superficial measure. As the saying goes, "If you want to play the part, you have to look the part." That's a bit of an overstatement, of course, but it holds much Truth.
Think about why police officers or soldiers wear uniforms. There are many reasons, not the least of which is so they can be identified as what they are. But another benefit is that it sends the message that everyone is part of one cohesive group. In the martial world, this is the difference between being a warrior and a soldier; the former may be a loose cannon doing his own thing, while the latter is to be a well-functioning and necessary member of an organization where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Uniforms in school send the same message. They tell students they are part of an entity that is ordered toward a certain purpose, not merely free agents there to do their own thing. It increases solidarity, a quality that must exist within any social group. Needless to say, this can only increase discipline, as uniforms are an outward sign of the legitimate conformity (i.e., everyone abiding by the same just rules) that must exist within any institution.
Ah . . . conformity. Did I use a dirty word? Everything must exist in its proper measure; gratuitous individuality is bad, too. Balance is the word.
The lack of that balance is one reason this idea may not be well-received today. We've redefined the First Amendment so it encompasses a multitude of puerile and prurient manifestations of "expression," when it was only meant to pertain to speech (the rendering of opinions). There is no moral imperative -- nor should there be a legal one -- to allow adolescents to exercise some vague form of expression through clothes or hair. The focus in school should be receptivity to learning, not expression of feelings.
Of course, this argument usually falls on deaf ears in a land where people mistake tears for character.
Comments