The official language thread

Simply the best.

We had extremely few BS rules and the last couple years of high school we were on a first-name basis with our teachers — to non-Dutch people that might sound insane? :slight_smile: —, but I really don’t think we had any such pressure.

tl;dr I don’t think we particularly experienced any of those pressures that come from making things the forbidden fruit, whether they’re 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.

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At secondary school, yes :slightly_smiling_face: But not at college and some sixth forms.

I think we might be talking about different things :thinking: 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 weren’t allowed to wear them, so there was no ‘mine are better/more fashionable/more expensive than yours’.

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Absolutely.

No. Or, to be precise: At university that wasn’t uncommon. At school some few (= very, very few) teachers did that too.

Well, I think you can tell I´m from the part of the germany with the strictest school system. Utterly unthinkable under any circumstances here!

No teachers from the “68er” generation? :slight_smile:

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. :slight_smile:

Nope for us was it was standing up for prayer every morning and respecting authorities.

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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, it’s 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 pupil’s perspective, from the teacher’s 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 I’ve since found out that generally speaking it seems to be unusual.

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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 doesn’t have the latest trainers because they’re 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 “just” about a pair of trainers.

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I almost have to wonder if that’s 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… there’s a theme there. You can’t 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. :wink:

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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.

So you did it “before it was cool”? :wink:

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Is this turning into: “the official body language thread”?

It’s interesting anyway. I have to say that when I was at primary school with those “suits”, 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 didn’t care, and suits helped).

Technically, yes. But it was no fun and I only got told much much later that I had an influence on all the others following suit.

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From my own experiences I can agree with @milanfahrnholz: It’s NOT a fairy tale. And I wasn’t on a school for “higher incomes”.

As this turns out to be a bigger discussion, maybe @Calypso can move the corresponding posts into a new thread. :slight_smile:

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I bet our favourite forumer nymph won’t, 'cause that’s all off-topic matter… :grimacing: It’s up to us to jump on a new thread, if desired :stuck_out_tongue:

But you can’t take the old posts with you into the new thread …

I meant that particular bit about deciding what to wear as a joke, because I’m so indecisive :wink:

I’m not sure what you mean with the Goosebumps comparison, though?

I don’t think any of us were really bothered - it was just the norm. I don’t 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 ‘own clothes day’ (my mum found that label hilarious - “but 'oo else’s clothes you gonna wear?! Hahahaha”)

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