Posted by:
catnip
(
)
Date: April 19, 2017 10:33PM
I(n elementary through high school, girls wore dresses. (Or skirts and blouses.) That's just the way things WERE. Nobody thought to question it.
I absolutely LOVED university. This was in SoCal, in the 60s. Long hair, beads, hip-huggers, bare feet if you wanted, no bra for those who could pull of that look without looking gross. . .
Administration didn't care how you LOOKED (if you smelled bad and they got complaints, that was different, but very rare.) They cared about what was in your MIND. They valued what and how you thought, the questions you asked, what you wrote and how you wrote it.
To me, to this day, that is the gold standard for a university. To be able to dress as outrageously as you want, as long as you can absorb very stringent academic material. (And they moved right along, too - no repeating stuff ad nauseam so the dummies could get it. There weren't any dummies to worry about.)
What you WEAR (as long as it covers "the essentials) shouldn't have anything to do with the quality of your education.
I've heard the arguments about when everyone wears the same outfit, nobody can flaunt a fancy wardrobe. (But everyone knows they have plenty of clothes because they wear them to "activities," live in a posh neighborhood, and Mommy and Daddy drive his and hers Maseratis.)
I've read that uniforms discourages "thinking outside the box." If the kids basically think alike and are no encouraged to question, You might end up with a bunch of little robots who are not ready for university.
Anyway, you've probably figured out - I have NO use for dress codes, ESPECIALLY when they apply ONLY to girls.
When my youngest daughter was in middle school, they had a "sort-of" uniform. No blue jeans were allowed. Both boys and girls were allowed to wear nice khaki trousers, or navy blue ones. Tops had to be in solid colors, (White, blue or khaki), no designs at all, shirts had to have collars. The kids hated it, as did the parents. There was eventually such a ruckus - at all levels - that the school did away with the code.