We had extremely few BS rules and the last couple years of high school we were on a first-name basis with our teachers â to non-Dutch people that might sound insane? â, but I really donât think we had any such pressure.
tl;dr I donât think we particularly experienced any of those pressures that come from making things the forbidden fruit, whether theyâre trainers, drugs or sex.
Good grace, it was already bad enough having to enforce nonsense like not drinking.
I should probably explicitly state that my experience with school uniforms is as a teacher.
At secondary school, yes But not at college and some sixth forms.
I think we might be talking about different things In the context of school uniforms vs non-uniforms, I think the pressure (as in peer pressure between students) comes from allowing people to wear what they want. We never had that pressure over e.g. the latest trainers because we simply werenât allowed to wear them, so there was no âmine are better/more fashionable/more expensive than yoursâ.
Well that would be people around my dad´s age. I had people who were often 10 or more years older than him though. Technically there may have been a few but not really in attitude.
A classmate of my dad became a politican in the landtag in bavaria so not everyone of that generation is like that obviously. My Dad is more the David Fox type of person, though.
Nope for us was it was standing up for prayer every morning and respecting authorities.
I thought you intended a juxtaposition between in school and out of school.
On further reflection I think that even if there is such a thing as peer pressure around clothing in some circumstances, itâs a heck of a lot better to learn to deal with something relatively benign like that than with worse forms of peer pressure.
As an aside, while you seem to be phrasing this as a positive from the pupilâs perspective, from the teacherâs perspective I might very well frame that as a negative effect of school uniforms: the making (clothing) choices life skill equivalent of listening to students who say they only like to read Goosebumps.
It was never odd to me, but Iâve since found out that generally speaking it seems to be unusual.
I understand what you mean, but to some pupils, the implications of this kind of peer pressure might not be so benign.
If a pupil doesnât have the latest trainers because theyâre from a low-income background, then the former being mocked implicates the latter. The pupil might just be making this connection in their own mind, or their peers might be purposefully making the connection - either way, it can be painful for them. And the low-income background may have resulted from relationship problems between the parents, and so on⌠so it ends up not being âjustâ about a pair of trainers.
I almost have to wonder if thatâs some kind of fairy tale they tell to uniformed children in the UK to justify the uniforms.
Pressures in this area were about style. Wider pants = cool, tighter pants = lame, loose boxers = cool, tighter underwear = lame⌠thereâs a theme there. You canât buy that sense of style. If anything, trying to do so would be your downfall.
You already shared how you had the exact same pressures with regard to tie length and such.
Having spent two years at a higher income school, I can assure you that peer pressure for not wearing the latest greatest clothing indeed WAS a thing in my day and it does exist. Then I changed to a lower income school (that wasn´t the reason though) and at least that problem went away.
I mostly got beaten up for being bad at sports or growing out my hair before everyone else did it too.
Is this turning into: âthe official body language threadâ?
Itâs interesting anyway. I have to say that when I was at primary school with those âsuitsâ, something like that:
(but ours were better, we had ties and different colors as I said before)
we all knew that guy was the son of a craftsman while the other was the son of a b⌠ahem of a professional but⌠we just tend to forget it, we just didnât care, and suits helped).
I meant that particular bit about deciding what to wear as a joke, because Iâm so indecisive
Iâm not sure what you mean with the Goosebumps comparison, though?
I donât think any of us were really bothered - it was just the norm. I donât think the notion of not wearing a uniform really occurred to us - you went to school, you wore a school uniform.
Apart from the odd âown clothes dayâ (my mum found that label hilarious - âbut 'oo elseâs clothes you gonna wear?! Hahahahaâ)