February 7, 2006
THERE'S A WAY TO DRESS:
Uniforms (Robert Coles, July-August 1996, New Oxford Review)
For years, actually, I have heard the word "uniform" used by certain Harvard college students of mine, who have arrived in Cambridge from small towns in the South or Midwest, and aren't familiar with a kind of constraint that is imposed by indirection: "I went to a Catholic school in Minnesota, and we were told we didn't all have to wear the same kind of blouse and skirt and socks and shoes, the way it used to be -- but, you know, we did have to wear some kind of blouse and skirt: I mean, no jeans, and no tee-shirts. So, when I came here I wasn't as uptight as some people I met here [during the first days of orientation] who came from schools where there really were uniforms and everyone had to wear them, be dressed the same. But, it doesn't take long to discover that there's a ‘uniform' here too -- and if you don't wear it, you'll pay a price. I mean [I had obviously asked] here, if you wear a skirt and blouse to class, you can feel out of it: too formal. Here, the scruffier the better, that's what you learn right off, boy or girl! There's a way to dress when you go to class, just as there was when I was in high school, only the clothes are different -- and Lord help you, at breakfast, if you come into the dining room looking neat and tidy, and your hair is combed and you're wearing a dress (a dress!) and some jewelry, a bracelet or a necklace: People will think you're on your way to a job interview, or something has happened -- you have to go to a hospital or a funeral or church, something unusual! You'll hear, ‘Is everything all right?' Now, I hear myself thinking those words -- if I get the urge to wear clothes that are just the slightest bit ‘formal,' the way I used to all the time! If I told my roommates or others in the [freshman] dorm what I've just said, they'd think I was odd -- making a case out of nothing, as one guy put it when I got into a discussion with him about all this, and made the mistake of pointing out that all the boys here wear khakis or jeans and sneakers, the dirtier the better, and open shirts, work shirts, a lot of them, as if we're in a logging camp out West!"She was exaggerating a little, but her essential point was quite well taken -- that in a setting where studied informality rules supreme, and where individualism is highly touted, there are, nevertheless, certain standards with respect to the desirable or the decidedly inappropriate, so that a dress code certainly asserts itself, however informally, unofficially: a uniform of sorts, as the young man she mentioned did, indeed, agree to call it, a range of what is regarded as suitable, and what is unusual, worth observing closely, even paying the notice of a comment, a question. Nor is such a college environment all that unusual, with respect to a relative consistency of attire that is, surely, more apparent to the outsider. We all tend to fall in line, accommodate the world (of work, of study, of travel and relaxation, of prayer) we have chosen, for varying lengths of time, to join. We take notice of others, ascertain a given norm with respect to what is (and is not) worn, and make the necessary choices for our wardrobe, our use -- or we don't do so, thereby, of course, for one reason or another of our own, setting ourselves apart, even as others promptly do the same in the way they regard us.
All of the above is unsurprising: the stuff of our daily unself-conscious living, yet an aspect of our existence that ought be remembered when a topic such as "uniforms" is brought up for public consideration -- a necessary context. Still, these days, when the subject of uniforms comes up, it is meant to help us consider how to work more effectively in our schools with young people who are in trouble, who aren't doing well in school, who may be drop-outs and already up to no good -- well on their way to delinquency, criminality. To ask such individuals (to demand of them when they are under the jurisdiction of a court) that they adhere to a certain dress code is to put them on due and proper notice: A certain kind of behavior is expected, and no ifs, ands, or buts -- the uniform as an exterior instance of what has to take place within (obedience, self-restraint, a loyalty to institutional authority). True, to repeat, clothes don't make us decent, co-operative, respectful human beings, in and of themselves, but they are an aspect of the way we present ourselves to others, and they are also daily reminders to us of the world to which we belong, and by extension the values and customs and requirements of that world. To tell a child, or a young man or woman, that he or she has to "shape up" in a certain way, dress in a certain manner, speak a certain language (and not another kind!) is to indicate a determination that a particular community's jurisdiction, its sovereignty, will be asserted, maintained, upheld, from moment to moment.
Scool uniforms were one of Bill Clinton's better causes, which unfortunately only illustrates how ambitionless his presidency was. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 7, 2006 8:23 AM
The President should be concerned with school uniforms?
Posted by: Tom C., Stamford,Ct. at February 7, 2006 8:34 AMThey hire the money.
Posted by: oj at February 7, 2006 8:37 AMWhile I was a member of the 82nd Abn. Div., at Fort Bragg, NC, (1967) bluejeans were not allowed on post. Nor were they allowed in high school (MN 1962-64).
Posted by: AllenS at February 7, 2006 9:22 AMIs there some foulness in our culture which did not stem from the days of shame when cowardice was the handmaiden of treason?
Go back, back in time to the days before the draft lottery collapsed the "anti-war" movement like a pricked balloon. In those days, the attire and grooming of a sidewalk derelict were evidence that one was not a "sell-out." Short hair? Must be ROTC or--gasp!--PLC, Marine Corps Platoon Leaders Course.
The motivation today to maintain bag-man and bag-lady standards of appearance is cut loose, barely, from its peace-creep roots. It remains the mark of the folk-enemy and culture-traitor, nonetheless.
It is ironic to see how school students in certain milieu have abandoned the natural use of the billed baseball cap, which is to shade the eyes, and wear their caps askew, but at some precise, predetermined angle of some hidden significance. When these individuals don their caps they are seen to adjust them in relation their head in an obscene parody of the way a military cover is squared away.
Posted by: Lou Gots at February 7, 2006 9:31 AMIt starts with the adults in charge. When teachers started coming to class wearing work boots and hunting shirts or torn jeans and vulgar t-shirts, they let students know they had no respect for them or the institution. Students got the message and followed suit.
At the small college in Vermont where I worked, the library was the unlikely hotbed for macho outdoor attire. The archive librarian, a look alike for Wally Cox, led the way in bizarre attire. The only thing lacking on his Bunyanesque ensembles was an axe hanging from his belt. Quite a source of mirth among the undergraduates.
Harvard is, as painful as it is to admit it, a human community. Therefore, it must have a standard of conformity that it enforces. That's what human communities do. Harvard students who dress up "nicely" are as suspicious as any nonconformists. Indeed, deliberate nonconformity in clothing is a particularly hostile statement of nonconformity; much more hostile than our statement of nonconformity made by hanging out here at BrothersJudd.
What has changed since 1968 -- and Lou gives this it's proper provenance -- is our lack of confidence in the right of the greater community to enforce (and if necessary use the power of the state to enforce) the greater conformity on smaller sub-communities, where appropriate.
Posted by: David Cohen at February 7, 2006 10:26 AMThere is absolutely no better example of this than Harley Davidson riders.
Given their mantra, that is supremely ironic.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at February 7, 2006 11:52 AMClothing is the least of the problems that your last paragraph addresses David. ERP's comment about adults being in charge, or not, addresses the origin of vulgar conventions. Hopefully the state will never become an agent of change on this issue.
Communal civility, the degree of dignity we accord others, and our selves, has been our greatest loss in the coarsening of society. Hopefully, the swing of the pendulum will restore greater civility; or perhaps the passing of a flawed generation.
Goodnight Cindy ... wherever you are.
Posted by: Genecis at February 7, 2006 12:19 PMGenecis: The pendulum? The pendulum is a mechanism. It is designed.
This is one of the great animating BrothersJudd issues. To what extent are conservatives not libertarians? To what extent are we entitled to use the state to enforce conformity to Judeo-Christianity? Can we burn witches, and who are the witches?
As for dress codes, don't they seem like a good opportunity for NYPD-style broken windows policing. We'll impose a dress code now to reduce the chance that we'll have to execute later.
Posted by: David Cohen at February 7, 2006 12:30 PMDavid:
Two million Americans are behind bars right now--we enforce conformity with ferocity.
Posted by: oj at February 7, 2006 12:36 PMReal non-conformity allows for baggy chinos and sharp-creased silk trousers and accepts all variations in between without derision. Dress codes and uniforms just become another issue to be debated endlessly.
When I had undergraduates working for me during summer programs, I told them that they should to wear to work what they might wear to visit their grandmothers. They all understood immediately and I never had to send anyone home to change.
With some of today's grandmothers, I wonder if that would still work?
Posted by: erp at February 7, 2006 1:21 PMerp: True nonconformity is anathema. Good thing it doesn't exist.
OJ: And yet young men are free without molestation to walk down our nation's streets with their pants belted below their hips and their underwear showing.
Posted by: David Cohen at February 7, 2006 3:19 PMDavid:
Fittimgly, that's a fashion that provokes gunshot wounds.
Posted by: oj at February 7, 2006 4:16 PMDavid: the good news is they cannot run very fast with your wallet when dressed like that.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at February 7, 2006 4:27 PMOJ:
Prison, yes, but as the civics teacher in Heinlein's Starship Troopers said:
"Suppose you merely scolded your puppy, never punished him, let him go on making messes in the house ... and occasionally locked him up in an outbuilding but soon let him back into the house with a warning not to do it again. Then one day you notice that he is now a grown dog and still not housebroken -- whereupon you whip out a gun and shoot him dead. Comment, please?"