Why Uniforms Fit High School Kids' Brains, pt. 2

Selling to Kids, Oct 13, 1999

Uniforms are sweeping schools across the country. What will the trend mean to kids and their psyches? And what will it ultimately mean to you?

Last month, S2K talked with Dan Acuff, president of YMS Consulting, a co-founder of The Character Lab, a development and consulting firm, and a psychologist, about the effects of the trend on elementary and middle school kids. High school students will take longer to uniform, with districts phasing them in gradually in the younger grades. This issue, we explore whether uniforms have the power to reduce separatism, cliquishness and conflict.

S2K: Isn't the behavior uniforms are meant to address too ingrained to be eliminated by uniforms?

Acuff: Clothing is an outward manifestation of it so [uniforms] are not going to eliminate violence in the schools in any sense but [they're] a step in that direction. It takes one more element out of the mix of differentiation.

If all schools all the way through 12th grade were uniformed, I think it would help. We're dealing with an ideal scenario now because of the reality of rebellion in the teen years in establishing one's identity.

At 13, when I become a teenager and my hormones are shifting, my major issue - psychologically and socially - is to establish my independence, separate from my parents, even separate from my peers. And it takes years, all during teen years and into early adulthood to work on this.

So if I am establishing my own identity, the dynamics of it would mean self-expression... that I should be able to wear what I want and to express myself as I want. So you're going to have tons of resistance if you try to introduce school uniforms into that.

S2K: What will be the difference in the reactions of a 14-year-old and a 17-year-old to the news they need to wear uniforms?

Acuff: Older teens, 16 to 19, are even more independent and perceive themselves more as adult decision makers so the latter would be even more difficult.

If you [introduce a dress code] year by year, starting with kindergarten or K-3, or in groups if you're in a hurry, you'd have a better situation. If kids grow up with it, they'll find their selfexpression elsewhere. Musicians will still get together and the "loadies" will still smoke pot, even with the uniforms. But from appearances' point of view, walking down the hallway to classes, you wouldn't have that separation and that ability to express one's own identity as much.

S2K: Isn't it true that although teens rebel, they're not rebelling from each other as much? It seems they're wearing the same clothes even if they're not wearing a uniform. There's almost an implied uniform.

Acuff: There are definitely dress codes, using the phrase to say that they have their own dress codes. It's a subculture phenomenon in most high schools among the different cliques or interest groups. Computer nerds will wear a certain kind of clothing, and the class leaders and social butterflies and cheerleaders wear another, and the church-goers, the conservatives, the loadies and the fringe group, others, so they are separated by how they dress.

S2K: So what I'm suggesting is the resistance might not be all that strong, because although in one way, they're growing independent, in another, they're really not. For someone to wear something completely different would probably be so radical.

Acuff: It's the issue of adults imposing. They've already had lawsuits in the Supreme Court, haven't they? I don't know where it netted out, but I think it netted out to local rule.

S2K: If uniforms are introduced in high school, will the same benefits apply to high school students as to younger ones?

Acuff: In an ideal world where you can overcome the resistance, and I think you can, it's a positive. In high school, if you can take the diversity of dress, hairstyles, tattoos and jewelry out of the picture, you've leveled the playing field to a degree, which is a positive thing in my view. [Students will] find plenty of ways to be diverse and be in their subcultures, but [uniforms] will take a very important element out of the mix and that's our differences.

S2K: Will girls react differently from boys to uniforms?

Acuff: Girls are more interested in style, so there will be more resistance from a "I can't wear my particular styles or what I can afford over everybody else." Oneup-manship comes into the picture. Certainly they're more brand-conscious and would be more diverse with the brands they prefer. Boys are more herdlike and lumped together into certain brands. For them, if everybody likes Nike, then it's Nike.

S2K: Universally, kids are going through peer pressure. With the desire of marketers to get inside kids' heads, is there any way they can use this? I've seen it in movies, but not much in marketing.

Acuff: I think it's probably instinctual to stay away. [Showing cliques] is just going to call attention to differences. But you might do clever things with many types of kids. Or, let's say there are kids that all wear black, the fringe group, whatever they are. Then there's a cheerleader group and the band group. And the ad is about their commonalities, the fact that they all wear the same kind of shoes underneath all that black and the band uniforms. It could be fun. Could make a statement that we're all the same.