Uniformity and school ties
Since all the kids are back to school now, I was browsing through the several articles on The Beeb and noticed this. It brings back a flood of memories of my school years; I kept my head down and tried to concentrate on getting good grades. After all, as one teacher kept drumming into my head, school is the foundation for any future endeavours.
However, keeping one’s head down doesn’t always work. Ultimately, to fit in you need to conform, whether you want to or not. It’s part of the ever growing social pressures of school life; I can only imagine what it’s like now. I always thought that school uniforms were a bit old fashioned, it doesn’t leave much room for individualism when they try to make everyone look the same.
There is something you can change to rebel against such an idea, hence the introduction of the dishevelled school tie. At first I wore my tie normally, done up quite nicely and in the “proper” way. Most of the first year students did it, being newbies you didn’t know. Later though, if you didn’t have the cool looking tie setup then you were considered an outcast.
Of course, I had a helping hand when one of the girls showed me how to tie one. You have the thin part of the tie out (and done up short) and the fat part tucked inside your shirt. It was all the rage at the time. Teachers made the odd comment but never really made any real fuss over it. I was more likely to get detention after school for chewing gum in class. One and only time, I did have a gum moment. The teacher was unhappy and funnily quite perplexed; I never chewed gum in class before. I should feel slightly ashamed about this, but damn it felt so good to dissent for once!
Fast forward a decade, and the same thing applies. I wear a suit to work every day, and if you didn’t dress up appropriately management called you out. I saw it happen the person finally relented. If we fast-forward another few decades from now, I wonder if uniformity will go beyond clothing; will we see more constraints on our lives. Such as what we eat, what career paths to take forcing us to fill skill gaps and so on and so forth. There are already shackles in place within our society, perhaps we are too self-absorbed to notice.
A note to teachers, if you think clip-on ties is going to prevent a mutiny then think again. The Guardian has kindly listed ways schoolchildren are using their clip-on ties. My favourite is: Clip-on earring tie. Get two ties, clip one to each ear. Await suspension.
The normal tie - This is too boring for rebellious teenagers.
Hilarious. My very small private high school had some weird dress code based on the 1950s, no uniform. We were supposed to all wear collared shirts, no t-shirts–everyone wore flannel collared shirts, open, with a graphical t-shirt underneath, no hats (girls could wear hats for a bit and then they banned that because the boys protested), no blue jeans but the kids from inner city Washington D.C. could wear their gang colors if they liked. I saw one boy wear baggy black jeans over his blue jeans and take the black jeans off in class five mins before the end of the day bell, complaining about how hot it was. Simply amazingly dumb the lengths people go to.
It made me furious, not because of conforming, since everyone broke the rules or bent them, but mainly for the white upper middle class ideas behind what is appropriate clothing. Esp. the idea about blue jeans. That was all a class decision from the director/headmistress who was this old crone hopelessly out of touch with reality. Other schools were making dress code policy based on real problems like gangs and drugs, and ours was making their policy based on some idea that they could take rich white kids and poorer black kids and make them into a model version of white America from some bygone era. My school was split fifty fifty between white kids and black kids with Asian kids as a minority and Latino kids almost non existent. Oh and when a girl got pregnant they practically forced her out of the school, the way they treated her. It was ridiculous. And all about class and reputation. Made me nuts. I tried conforming my first year too, got nice collared shirts and whatnot. By the end of the year I was wearing flannels and t-shirts and dark colored jeans and got my share of detentions as well.