Dress Codes In The United States

Throughout the United States of America, schools require students to meet a certain standard of dress. Although almost every school’s standard is different, most schools have dress codes. Dress codes range anywhere from extremely loose to extremely strict, yet no matter how hard schools try to prevent problems, things slip through the cracks. Dress codes exist to help students, although in the end it seems they're ineffective. Other countries have solved these issues using school uniforms. School uniforms should be used in the United states instead of dress codes.
For many students in the United States, meeting dress code standards is a daily concern. Schools often ban things like jeans with holes,or leggings, but these clothes are in style, so they make up the majority of what students can find at a reasonable price. Rules often give very vague descriptions of clothing that is banned, causing dress codes violation to differ from teacher to teacher based on their opinions. A student in the United States can never be sure if they will be dress-coded on any day.
Enforcing dress codes shows students that how they dress is more important than their education. Students are too often pulled from classrooms and sent to the office to wait for new clothes to be brought from home, or for other teachers to decide
whether their clothes even violate the dress code in the first place. Sometimes students are forced to change into gym clothes which is embarrassing and serves as a distraction for the rest of the day. In extreme cases, students can even be sent home completely for their dress code violation. In all of these examples, students are being taken away from their education, which isn’t right.
Dress code policy is put in place for many reasons , however they are not effectively serving their purpose.
Students get away with wearing many things that teachers wouldn’t identify as disruptive or hateful, but have a different meaning among students. For example, students wear shirts with pictures of tweets from parody twitter accounts specifically to offend other students. These tweets out of context mean nothing, allowing students wearing them serve as a disruption for the entire course of the school day without teachers knowledge. There are obviously issues with dress codes, but some still argue that students should have the power to dress as they
wish.
Some people argue that students have the constitutional right to dress the way they want, but whether or not the way students dress is protected by freedom of speech is highly disputed (Wilson 1998). When students dress in the style that makes them the happiest, they meet other students with similar views and opinions. Students who are uniformly dressed, however, are presented with the opportunity to meet people they never would have talked to otherwise. Some people’s issues with school uniforms lie simply in the fact that they are ugly, but at some point, education has to take priority.
In places where dress codes fall short, school uniforms do wonders. Students have improved self-esteems, schools have better learning environments, and there is far less violence (Walmsley 2011). School uniforms are also cheap and easily accessible. Switching to uniforms takes away most opportunities for students to be targeted, as well. Using school uniforms gives students power over their education, even if it seems they take away freedoms. Schools should replace their dress codes with mandatory uniforms. When students have complete freedom over their dress, there are issues like gang violence and bullying, but dress codes aren’t enough. Dress codes often present situations where students’ educations are jeopardized in favor of upholding dress regulations, which are often racist, sexist, or classist. Other countries have already switched to uniforms, and solved these issues, so why is America so far behind? Bring America into the modern age using school uniforms.