Uniforms are old school

DISEMPOWERING? ‘School uniforms have long been used as a tool of control to enforce conformity’

Guest Column
Gearóid ó Riain

My late father, George Ryan, delighted in telling the story of how his sister, my Aunt Clare, became a nun. “She joined the nuns because of her ankle socks,” he would regale with a smirk.
It was Dundalk in 1949. She arrived into school on the first day of Sixth Year in St Vincent’s, the Mercy convent school, wearing ankle socks, because the uniform knee socks were sold out in the drapers. She was sent home by the principal for being out of uniform. My enraged grandmother promptly withdrew her from the school and enrolled her in the St Louis school in Carrickmacross, where she sat her Leaving Cert… and was recruited into the order.
School uniforms have long been used as a tool of control to enforce conformity. In my teaching career in a variety of school types since the early 1980s I have witnessed students being chastised, detained, humiliated and excluded because they did not conform to school uniform rules.
Of course, teachers’ views on the matter vary. Some relish the control it gives them over students. Others justify their actions as ‘only following orders’. Many hours at staff meetings over the years have been wasted debating the acceptability of various hairstyles, the minutiae of nose rings and earrings, what constitutes a boot or a shoe, and whether the colour of the sole of the shoe must also conform. But in 21st century Ireland many teachers are reluctant to apply what they consider antiquated rules that put them, unnecessarily, into conflict with students.
Since their invention in England in the 16th century, school uniforms have been a marker of social status. They were designed to reinforce social-class distinctions rather than reduce them. Modelled on the upper-class English private schools, the private schools of Ireland wore the caps, blazers and ties to mark their exclusivity. The middle-class schools, always aspiring upwards, mimicked the ‘posh’ schools. So, don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that uniforms are about social equality. They are anything but.
Conservative Irish Catholicism is the other main ingredient feeding the fixation on conformity in schools. The religious orders themselves operated under the rule of uniformity and mirrored this in their schools, which were their main recruiting grounds, as happened with my Aunt Clare. The Christian philosophy of dying to the self, required the repression of all expressions of individuality, with all the horrible consequences we are now all too familiar with.
Both students and parents have largely bought into the normality of uniforms. Students have become so accustomed to them that they think they couldn’t manage to get dressed in the morning without them, even though they do so in the evenings when they go home, at weekends and during holidays. How educationally pathetic is it that we have created a system where 18 year olds feel so disempowered that they are daunted by the thought of having to get dressed in the morning without a uniform?
There are other problems too. They are much more expensive than ordinary clothes and put financial pressure on families. The leading children’s rights organisation, Barnardos, has consistently argued that the cost of uniforms puts an unnecessary financial burden on parents forcing some to go into debt or not pay other bills. (Barnardos, School Costs Survey 2019).
They are often uncomfortable and, depending on the season, too hot or not warm enough. Some students with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), or neuro-diverse students, find uniforms difficult to wear due to their tight fit or scratchy fabrics. They are often unsuitable, especially for girls, to cycle to school.
There is no sound educational, social or financial argument for uniforms. They are an educationally bankrupt concept.
Andreas Schleicher, Director of Education in the OECD, reporting on the Irish education system in 2021 criticised it for producing students who cannot think outside the box. He warns we are good at producing compliant ‘second class robots’ who are ‘very good at doing what we tell them’. But in the 21st century we need people who can better think for themselves about ‘what makes us human’.
Producing robots who do what they are told, but who cannot think for themselves, is the inevitable result of an educational philosophy which overvalues conformity. When conformity is paramount, having uniforms is logical. The connection is obvious to all except the willfully blind. Under such regimes, enabling the expression of children’s individuality and distinctiveness as unique human beings is not the priority.
My progressive Aunt Clare stopped wearing her nun’s uniform in the 1970s. Isn’t it time schools did the same?

Gearóid Ó Riain is a teacher in Westport and has taught in schools in Kildare and Dublin.