OPINION: Do schools bully students by making them wear uniforms?

Minister for Education Norma Foley has decided to establish a system to gather data on bullying in Irish schools. Her intention is to examine bullying by students of other students.
The initiative is based on a definition of bullying as “targeted behaviour that causes harm, whether it is physical, emotional or psychological in nature… Bullying behaviour is repeated over time and involves an imbalance of power in relationships between two people or groups of people in society”.
The minister should go one step further and gather data on the main inter-group relationship in schools – between teachers and students. That relationship certainly does involve an imbalance in power. How is that power used?
While there is no doubt that the actions of individual teachers can harm students, is there evidence that harm is being done by the systemic culture within schools, which is largely dictated by school leaders?
The collective impact of school rules and their enforcement – what students are reported and punished for, and their frequency and severity – should be examined to discern whether it constitutes institutional bullying, be it physical, emotional or psychological.
Many of us who went to school in the decades before the 1980s believe that a culture of teachers bullying students was endemic in the Irish education system. It found its most obvious expression in the regular use of corporal punishment as a coercive means of control and discipline.
I recently came across an RTÉ archive news interview from 1974 with a 19-year-old student leader, Tony Kinsella. In it he made the case for the abolition of corporal punishment. One of the questions put to him was particularly revealing. He was asked why he was organising such a campaign when there was no obvious demand for change from the Irish public. His campaign to stop teachers beating students was successful because, despite the interviewer’s perception, there was a latent desire for change in Ireland and a rejection of the culture of intimidation and punishment in schools.
Has that culture been fully eradicated from the modern school system? André Spicer, Professor of Organisational Behaviour in the University of London, writing in The Guardian, thinks that it has morphed. He observed that school uniforms took over as the main instrument of control after the abolition of corporal punishment because there was a panic in schools about how they were going to control students.
Spicer claims that because of this panic, many schools introduced uniforms or became stricter on them, generating fear of sanctions and punishment, albeit of a more psychological and emotional nature than physical punishment. (Although some students will tell you that being forced to wear uniforms also causes physical discomfort.)
Evidence from a major study of bullying in schools across Europe also supports the assertion that there is a link between uniforms and bullying.
In 2018, Statista reported on bullying in European schools in 41 countries. Only in eight of the 41 countries were uniforms the norm. The eight includes Ireland. Significantly, all eight of these countries were in the top half of levels of reported bullying. Three of them – Russia, Latvia and Malta – were in the top five. Not only does this give the lie to the myth that uniforms protect children from bullying, it also suggests that there is a direct link between school systems that place high value on uniformity and those that see higher levels of bullying.
Many Irish schools, particularly at second level, continue to operate some level of coercion of students towards uniformity, through enforcement of arbitrary school rules about what they can wear. Anecdotal evidence suggests that almost 50 percent of punishments are related to uniform and piercings infringements, blotting the school records of students, intimidating, and beating them, metaphorically, into submission.
Seán Ó Diomasaigh, reflecting on a career of 46 years as a teacher, principal and department inspector, concluded recently that the time he spent chasing down aberrant students [about their uniforms] was a complete waste of time.
This widespread Irish educational culture has a depressing discriminatory and oppressive impact on students. Many are still coming to school afraid of being reprimanded, suspended, penalised, detained for wearing something they feel comfortable in but which is in breach of an arbitrary rule. It could be the colour of their hair, the design of their shoes or what they are wearing to stay warm, etc.
It is all such a pity because there is another way. Cork post-primary principal Colm O’Connor recently wrote that ‘allowing students to be themselves brings light and levity to the classroom and corridors’. We could all do with that.

— Gearóid Ó Riain, Westport