History of School Uniforms
The first recorded use of standardized dress in education may have been in England in 1222, when the Archbishop of Canterbury mandated that students wear a robe-like outfit called the "cappaclausa." The origin of the modern school uniform can be traced to 16th Century England, when the impoverished "charity children" attending the Christ's Hospital boarding school wore blue cloaks reminiscent of the cassocks worn by clergy, along with yellow stockings. As of Sep. 2014, students at Christ's Hospital were still wearing the same uniform, and according to the school it is the oldest school uniform still in use. When Christ's Hospital surveyed its students in 2011, 95% voted to keep the traditional uniforms.
In later centuries, school uniforms became associated with the upper class. At one of England's most prestigious schools, Eton, students were required to wear black top hats and tails on and off campus until 1972, when the dress codes began to be relaxed.
School uniforms in the United States followed the traditional use of uniforms established in England and were generally limited to private and parochial schools. One exception was found in government-run boarding schools for Native American children, first established in the late 1800s, where the children, who had been removed from their families, were dressed in military-style uniforms.
US School Uniform Movement Begins
The first US public schools known to institute uniform policies were in Maryland and Washington, DC, in the fall of 1987, with Cherry Hill Elementary School in Baltimore, MD, gaining the most publicity. These early uniform programs were voluntary, but according to aNew York Times report from Dec. 1987, most parents supported the idea and "almost all" students wore the uniforms. School officials and other advocates of the new uniform policies noted improvements in students' "frame of mind"
and stated that uniforms had "sharply reduced discipline problems." They also reported that uniforms had "already reduced the preoccupation of students with expensive designer clothing for school wear and eased the financial burden that placed on the students' families." [48] The origin of the uniform policy in Baltimore has been linked to a 1986 shooting, in which a local public school student was wounded during a fight over a pair of $95 sunglasses.By the fall of 1988, 39 public elementary schools and two public junior high schools in Washington, DC, had instituted mandatory uniform polices, and soon the movement spread to other states, including Connecticut and New Jersey, generally in urban schools with mainly low income and minority students. In 1988, Ed Koch, then-Mayor of New York City, expressed support for school uniforms, saying that they encourage "common respect and improve the learning environment," and praising them because of their similarity to outfits worn in private and parochial schools. A pilot uniform program was introduced in New York City in 1989.
The first school district in the United States to require all its K-8 students to wear uniforms was the Long Beach Unified School District, CA, in Jan. 1994. Later the same year, California Governor Pete Wilson signed a bill officially allowing schools to implement mandatory uniform policies. In accordance with the new law, Long Beach parents were given an opt-out provision. The Long Beach Unified School District announced through a spokesman that gang activity in the area had provided an impetus for the policy: "Every large city in the U.S. has been concerned about the gangs. Their clothes really are an unofficial uniform of intimidation."
Bill Clinton's Support of Uniforms
On Jan. 3, 1996, President Bill Clinton told Congress during his State of the Union speech: "f it means that teenagers will stop killing each other over designer jackets, then our public schools should be able to require their students to wear school uniforms." On Feb. 25, 1996, President Clinton repeated his message about uniforms in his weekly radio address and during a series of media appearances. On the same day, he ordered the distribution of a school uniform manual to the country's 16,000 school districts. The manual guided school districts in the legal enforcement of a uniform policy. In July 1998, President Clinton continued his promotion of school uniforms with a speech at the annual convention of the American Federation of Teachers, stating that uniforms help children "feel free" and reduce crime and violence. In response, according
totheNew York Times, then-US Senator and former US presidential candidate Phil Gramm "accused the President of a tendency toward intrusive government."
School Uniforms and the Law
In 1969, the US Supreme Court made a decision that would later be used by both uniform proponents and opponents to support their arguments. In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the Court ruled 7-2 that schools could not curtail students' freedom of expression as long as the students' choices were "not disruptive, and did not impinge upon the rights of others." The students in question had worn black armbands to protest America's involvement in the Vietnam War, and school uniform opponents use this decision to argue that students' choice of what to wear is protected by the Free Speech Clause in the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Uniform proponents, however, cite a passage in Tinker's majority opinion that states, "The problem posed by the present case does not relate to regulation of the length of skirts or the type of clothing..."
Several lower courts have made rulings related to school uniforms, often favoring uniform proponents. In a 1995 case, Bivens by Green v. Albuquerque Public Schools, a federal district judge ruled that the desire to wear "sagging pants" prohibited by the school dress code did not constitute freedom of expression because, unlike the wearing of black armbands to protest the Vietnam War, it did not convey a "message," nor did it represent an ethnic identity: "Sagging is not necessarily associated with a single racial or cultural group, and sagging is seen by some merely as a fashion trend followed by many adolescents all over the United States." The plaintiff had contended that his choice of outfit was an element of hip hop style favored by minorities and that it constituted a "group identity," stating that "such intentional identification clearly must involve freedom of expression
In the summer of 1999, controversy erupted in Florida when Polk County Schools Superintendent Glenn Reynolds suggested that parents could be jailed if they failed to comply with the new mandatory uniform policy. Reynolds stated that parents who allow their children to be dressed out of uniform are "contributing to the delinquency of a child," before later retracting his comments.