By Bryan Mullan
A provincial government proposal to make school uniforms mandatory is drawing fire from Centretown students, parents and teachers.
“To say if you wear a shirt and tie you behave better than if you wear a T-shirt is foolish,” says Peter Eddison, whose teenage son attends Lisgar Collegiate Institute.
Eddison, who went to a private school and had to wear a uniform, doesn’t see the connection between dressing and learning.
He also concedes if he was quoted in a newspaper supporting uniforms his son, “would have killed me.”
Earlier this month, Education Minister Dave Johnson suggested students would learn more and behave better if they wore school uniforms. These remarks follow the government’s announcement that schools will be required to establish a code of conduct — which could include mandatory uniforms.
At Immaculata High School a school uniform policy has been in place for 73 years.
Bernie Swords, the school’s principal says although uniforms work for his school, they may not be appropriate in every school across the province.
“To have a stringent uniform code for all Ontario schools I don’t think would be a good idea at all,” says Swords. “All one has to do is look beyond the city, in rural areas, or in aboriginal communities — here we’re looking at respect for their culture. A uniform in that context might not be appropriate.”
Swords says most schools already have some form of dress code so students don’t wear anything inappropriate to school.
He adds one advantage to uniforms is they remove the pressure to show up in the newest fashions.
“You don’t have to wear the latest clothes from Le Château,” he says.
Geoffrey Delage, an OAC student at Lisgar Collegiate does not buy the argument that uniforms eliminate the pressure to fit in. While he used to attend a school with a strict dress code, he says students distinguished themselves by buying specific types of clothing.
“People found ways to stand out; they might wear different kinds of pants,” says Delage.
Angie Spence, the principal of Lisgar Collegiate, doesn’t think uniforms erase differences in class, it simply camouflages them.
“Students may be wearing the same things to school but that doesn’t hide the fact that one student can take private lessons while another cannot afford to.”
Spence thinks that there are other issues the government should be focusing on, such as funding, instead of uniforms.
Mars Bottiglia, of the Ottawa-Carleton Catholic School Board, says even though there are disadvantages to uniforms, some people still support the idea.
“In the schools that have incorporated uniforms for the most part are very happy. It was difficult at first; however, once the tradition was established, they get used to it.”
Educators must make recommendations to the government by March 1, 1999, and a new province-wide code of conduct could be in place as early as September.