School Uniforms
45:34 Share

first met you when you came up to me after a talk I gave and pitched this story idea in my mind and you can correct me if I'm wrong here you were wearing like fuzzy leg warmers and a little skirt does this sound right that is close because I do remember exactly what I was wearing because I thought about it I had this fuzzy knit skirt and a trench coat and I think I was wearing really tall boots

You have a very unique sense of style. Well, thank you. Which is all just framing to say I'm kind of surprised you grew up with a uniform. Yes. My name is Grace Tarducci. I am an independent filmmaker and animator and a former Catholic school student. So I went to Catholic school from kindergarten to 12th grade.

And my style identity was very closely tied to my personal identity at the time, which was definitely like rebelling. And so I was pretty good at experimenting with what was technically within the bounds of the dress code as was written.

but was still pushing it too far. - You can't have been the only one messing with it. The whole thing is like Catholic school girls roll up their skirts. Like surely everybody was doing this. - Yes, obviously. That is a typical thing to do. Everyone pretty much does that. And I would very much over accessorize my uniform, like wearing a lot of jewelry or trying to get away with patterned tights. And I would dye my hair a lot and heavy makeup, you know.

peace, love, and rock and roll over here and they really did not know what to do. Like I was getting in trouble so much they hired a dean of discipline at the school and they said that was partially because of my uniform infractions and the first thing that he ever had to do formally at the school

was take me aside into a room and tell me I had to dye my hair to a natural color. What color was it? It was red and it wasn't even that bad. Like I've had purple hair before. It was red and I was very offended and I wrote a speech about it.

I said in my essay that I felt like that was patronizing to us, that we wouldn't be able to do our schoolwork because someone had red hair. I remember feeling offended by that language. So the only thing more classic than like

Being a Catholic school girl and rebelling against the dress code is then participating in the argument about the dress code. I think Grove should dump the uniforms and we have casual dress all year round! It's in the Princess Diaries. I feel like I was actually thinking about Princess Diaries because they had a really similar dress code to us in that movie. What's my point again?

You like our uniforms. They're equalizers. It's just like such a classic debate question. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, perhaps it's a common trope because teenagers in general are rebelling and questioning these pretty arbitrary rules that have been set by adults that we're now realizing are flawed, right?

I didn't grow up having a uniform. When you said your uniform is like the Princess Diaries uniform, immediately my thought was like, cute. I love it. I was always so jealous of people who wore uniforms. I think that uniforms are fundamentally pretty great. And it's a lot of other stuff that society has put on uniforms that need to be removed. But the clothes themselves are like a wonderful idea. Yeah, totally. But no. No.

After the break, Grace and I explore the uniform. Sure, the question of whether to have a uniform or not to have a uniform. But really to talk about how the idea of school uniforms came to impact American public education.

We're living through a pretty rocky present. Maybe the past can help. Check out Radiotopia's This Day, hosted by Jodi Avergan, with historians Nicole Hemmer and Kelly Carter Jackson. Three times a week, they take you into one story from that day in U.S. history, from Eisenhower's weird vendetta against squirrels, to the time we accidentally dropped a nuclear bomb on North Carolina, to the women who fought against the right to vote. ♪

It's smart, surprising, and actually fun. This is a big moment for history. Next year is America's 250th birthday, and, well, look around. There's lots of history being made. Subscribe to This Day for your historical perspective wherever you get your podcasts, as well as YouTube and Instagram.

I have just eaten my breakfast. Okay, this is gonna be my summer of excellent, excellent hair. I wanna look like Julia Roberts in Mystic Pizza. I wanna have like a big ol' mane of hair. And so this is gonna be my summer of neutrophil. Breaking the seal.

Nutrafol is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand trusted by over one and a half million people. Anything truly worthwhile takes time and effort. And with Nutrafol, see thicker, stronger, faster growing hair and less shedding in just seconds.

I'm going to be on a three-month journey, and you can come join me too. This summer, stop worrying about your hair and start making memories. For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering listeners of articles of interest $10 off your first month's subscription and free shipping when you go to Nutrafol.com and enter the promo code ARTICLES. Find out why Nutrafol is the best-selling hair growth supplement brand at Nutrafol.com. Nutrafol is the best-selling hair growth supplement brand at Nutrafol.com.

spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L.com promo code articles. That's Nutrafol.com promo code articles. All right, here we go. Bottoms up.

Articles of Interest is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

I have no issues with the uniforms and everything. Like, you know, I've always had issues with being confined to a box. So I had the chance of talking to the designer, Prabal Gurung. I'm Prabal Gurung. I am a fashion designer. Big deal designer. Dressed all kinds of amazing celebrities. Oprah, Michelle Obama, Sarah Jessica, Kate Middleton. It's amazing. I'm grateful for their being...

It was my impossible dream to become a designer. He grew up in Nepal. Living back home in Nepal where those dreams about fashion was not only ridiculous but was impossible. The thing about Nepal is it is a really beautifully mystical, magical place

When you're growing up, if you were someone like me who had this ambition and desire to push myself, it was really like confining. He went to a Catholic school in Nepal. What was the uniform you had to wear at Xavier's? Confining, restrictive, boring. What it was?

Yawn inducing. Let me just put it this way so I can explain. White shirt, navy blue trouser with navy blue blazer with gold buttons, black shoes. And it was so boring. It really felt like, where am I? Am I ever going to be able to shine? I could see my mother transform herself with the red lipstick and the bindi and the tikka and all of that stuff. And I was like, can I be like that too? When Prabhupada was growing up,

He was teased pretty mercilessly for being gay, but he would watch his mom do her makeup and put on saris and sometimes she'd say like, "Do you want to try it on?" I would nod my head vigorously and listen, I think she probably let me because I think she knew how troubled I was. So whatever joy I could derive from anything, she allowed me. And so he understood how good it felt to wear beautiful clothes just at home. He couldn't really go out in them.

I was simply fascinated by the colors, the ruffles, and trying on my mom's sari, her bangles, which were massive on my tiny hand, but the jangling of the sound. He was just like, I love clothes. I love the way this feels. And he even said he would see the Catholic schoolgirls rolling up their skirts and be like, that looks fun. I want to do that. As they leave their house, it gets rolled up.

I was like, if they're allowed to do it, why not me? But there really wasn't any culture of pushing back from the boys. And so he quietly had an alternative version of his uniform made. I had it made. I was like over the holiday. It was like a similar color of the shirt, but it felt really nice on his skin. It almost was like silk and everyone else was cotton.

And I was a notorious. I used to get in trouble all the time. And towards the end of it, I started wearing blue eyeshadows and wear mascara. I was just like, you know, listen, I'm getting bullied. I'm getting no matter what. I was just like, fuck it. You know, I'm just going to go full on. I don't even care. But I asked him, so it sounds like you weren't that into uniforms. He was like, oh, no. I'm glad I did. Really? Yeah. I'm glad I did because it allowed me

me to really explore the possibility of defining how I present myself to the world. It really taught me the idea of rules, regulations, and how far I can push it and how far I can't. It really defines who I am as a person now.

I understand the value of uniform. Like, I get it. When I think about it, not everyone in that school came from wealth and access. So uniform sometimes is an equalizer. But let's not be fools. You can't hide the fact that we live in an unequal society. Even as kids, we know who's rich, who's not. We pretty much know by the shoes that they wear, by the pen that they write with, the food that they bring, the water bottle they carry. So we know who's rich and who's not. But...

I still say, if you can limit the factors that create an unequal society in school, why not?

I don't know. I just felt like in school everything was a competition. Like looking at who had what pencil case or who had what pants and it's like, okay, I'd rather it only be about socks or barrettes or like whatever tiny thing. I know that it's not going to make the issue go away. It's deeper than that. Sure, yeah. Let's limit the factors because kids are horrible anyway, right? So like if we have less things to bully each other about, maybe that's a good thing. But then my question to that would be, why does it look like this then? ♪

I'm gonna give you two pictures, okay? And I want you to describe what the person is wearing in these pictures. So this first picture is from 1971 and is of my aunt Patty and we went to the same elementary school, okay? - See, I'm glad. - I think she looks so cute. She's wearing a plaid jumper with a white shirt. - Okay, now this one is from 2008.

2006 or 2007 and it's me. What uniform am I wearing? You are wearing a plaid jumper with a white shirt under it. Okay, it's basically the same. It's like the same exact thing and it's the same colors and we're wearing the same undershirt. It's more than 30 years apart. It's the exact same

outfit. And I think that is my big why here in general. Like, why is it this like prep school Eurocentric looking fit that hasn't changed since the 60s? Why do we have every single kid in a polo? Well, it should be said that the kids on my block, we should have walked by the school on my block. They do wear like tracksuits.

So I think that is increasingly a move to have kids just wear uniforms that are comfortable to them. But you're right, this other antiquated uniform still persists. I guess we should talk about where it comes from in the history, right? You think? Yeah. Okay. I was looking at yearbooks and the girls aren't wearing uniforms. And I'm like, wow, this is really...

weird. Like maybe they got permission that day and they weren't, they didn't have to wear the uniforms. 1917, 1918, I'm not seeing these uniforms. And then suddenly I see the uniforms and I'm like, oh, what's happened? What's changed? Sally Dwyer McNulty is a professor at Marist College who we went to speak to. My book is Common Threads, A Cultural History of Clothing in American Catholicism.

There's this long history in European Catholicism of sisters opening asylums and charities. Where I first saw uniforms in Catholic institutions, it had to do with charitable institutions and it was asylums and children in asylums where parents could drop their kids off and maybe they couldn't take care of them. Often these quote-unquote uniforms were just simple dark clothes.

seen many pictures of asylum children, but the descriptions seem to be more like a smock. Just to sort of get the kids in something. The church saw that these children need some kind of parenting and care, but they also wanted to identify these children and want to kind of mark these children because kids ran away from these asylums as well.

And that tradition continued in Catholic-run charities in the United States. They do open asylums for children. New York City had a really significant asylum. But that's not exactly a school uniform as such.

The first instance of a school uniform in the United States would be in what were called federal Indian boarding schools. A segment of sisters or priests or brothers felt as though, like, okay, this is our mission. We're going to provide education to Native American kids, but at the same time also thinking that these kids weren't capable in the same way that white children were. So these schools were implemented for the purpose of

of taking cultural identity away from Native children in order to Europeanize them. Stripping those Native American kids of their identity and language and customs. Their hair was cut, their traditional outfits were taken, and they were put into these militaristic uniforms that were supposed to make everyone look the same. You know, that kind of homogenizing. That's where we first see

a school uniform being implemented in the United States.

First, it's in charitable institutions where they're in uniforms. And then I also start to see, and I would call this more a dress code, in elite select schools. A lot of those asylums and charities were funded from the tuitions that nuns charge to rich families. Sisters have to sustain themselves, unlike Europe, where these convents have been around for centuries. In the United States, it's just like a class.

clean slate here. Right? Yeah, it's that that sounds like kind of cold, but, but in a way, they have to figure out how they're gonna survive. Something that really defines the American Catholic school movement is this like need to make money. Well, these are proto Catholic schools, right? Because they're not what we think of as Catholic schools now. So what you're referring to are the convent schools, it was just a very

highbrow education for upper class privileged girls. They were run by nuns and they had a dress code. We don't have the technology to really create a uniform, right? I mean, this is so like, duh, but we take it for granted. The idea of a uniform relied on mass produced clothing. It was almost impossible for uniforms to actually be uniform in

in the days before you could just buy something ready-made. Everyone's going to their tailor, but they had specificity, even a swatch of fabric that you would take to the tailor, and they have to adhere to that. So this one, it's 1899. It's just so not what we would think of as the archetypal Catholic school uniform. So she has a...

It's a full black skirt gathered at the waist and then she has long sleeves. - Like a Wicked Witch of the West Halloween costume. - Wicked Witch of the West, yes. That's a tongue twister. - They were more similar to what

you would imagine a nun wearing than what you would imagine like a Catholic schoolgirl wearing now. And they seem to me to really prioritize, emphasize dark hues so that the students wouldn't display materialism vanity. And the sisters kind of have their eye on someone who might join the religious order. It's kind of like preparing girls to like go into that life.

There was an element of that. However, it was also a way of the sisters to gain funding for their convent.

How will these elite schools, which again are supporting the sisters, going to remain open? And one of the ways they did that was with a very specific uniform. So they're really identifiable as Catholic schoolgirls. And so having this special uniform that sets them apart is a mark of their distinction and class too, because this isn't crappy fabric. This is very nice clothing.

But Catholic schools as we know them now didn't really proliferate until public schools did.

And in America, it took a surprisingly long time for public schools to get started. The early, our founding fathers, whatever that means, but our founding fathers, like Jefferson and Benjamin Rush and even George Washington, they all talked about like, we need public schools. I spoke to this historian and policy expert named Rachel Lissy. She was saying that from the very founding of the American experiment,

Our founding fathers always wanted to make a public school. But it didn't happen. The reason it didn't happen in the 18th century is because there wasn't like the political will for it. So the earliest schools in America were these sort of local schools they referred to as district schools and parents would pay. You used to have like a one-room schoolhouse, this journeyman teacher who would like go from town to town. He would teach your kids to read. ♪

Public education didn't happen basically until Catholics started coming to the U.S. The shift comes in the mid-19th century towards publicly funded schools. It wasn't really about academics. It was much more this idea that there were huge waves of Irish immigrants coming into America, and so we needed to create these public schools in order to Americanize all of these foreign-born, immoral folks coming from outside.

I think it was also this idea of keeping away the threat of monarchy that came from Catholicism. Public schools could accurately be described as Protestant schools. When you think about it, the project of teaching children to read is a Protestant one. So that they can read the Bible is a very Protestant idea because the idea is like we don't want you listening to the priest or the Pope.

Each individual student needs to have their own relationship with the Bible and with God that is going to shape their moral behavior. So we need to not just intervene between these kids and their parents, but between these kids and the Pope.

Then the bishops decide that they don't want Catholic kids to be reading the King James Bible in the public school. They're concerned about paying taxes that go to these schools. The Catholic hierarchy demanded that Catholic children in the United States must have a Catholic education.

There is a requirement. It's passed. It's the Third Plenary Council in 1884, where they determine that they're going to open their own schools. So this is why the parochial schools pop up, and they're associated with the parish that you're a part of, which would be your church. So it's not like an elite school. It's like, okay, you have to pay a little extra money, but it's still pretty affordable. Yeah, these were largely affordable because the sisters were doing free labor.

And from the beginning of both the public school system and the Catholic parochial school system,

The metric of success was not which system made smarter students. As schools were forming, the debates about how to shape behavior were much more intense than the debates about what kids were actually going to learn. Like, it was like, eh, they'll learn to read, they'll learn numbers. That wasn't the big focus. It was about which school system made better Americans. It was also about teaching them the skills they'll need to fit in the economy in the right way. So they'll need to learn how to delay gratification.

and control their impulses. Dr. Lissy told me that the idea of responding to bells is good preparation for future factory workers. That's so nuts, like, that we had to run from classroom to classroom at the sound of a bell. Yeah, that's really funny. And, like, probably adhering to, like, really rigid schedules, too. And meanwhile, on the Catholic side... There's a uniform. There is expectation of behavior and order and discipline. According to Professor McNulty, there's this idea...

that Catholic schools have to prove that they can make their kids as well behaved, if not better behaved than the public school students.

And so they decided to do what the elite convent schools once did, which is have all the students in uniforms, which promoted their values of modesty and propriety. The bottom line is Catholics in America are the minority and they're the cultural minority, although there's lots of Catholics. So you weren't outfitting the elite Catholics. You were outfitting the daughters of the workaday Catholics.

And so you had to make something that was presentable, economical, and that you could manufacture a huge amount. So Catholic schools turned to uniform manufacturers like Victor Eisenberg. Victor Eisenberg had also been involved with the military. He had made police uniforms. It should be said that Victor Eisenberg...

is a Jew. Jews ran the schmata business. I just think it's so funny how much of Goyesha American culture, like, we made. So this man had a monopoly on development of the Catholic school uniform because there weren't so many places you could get a uniform. The shrewd businessman that he was, Victor Eisenberg, would create these multi-year contracts

And it was really smart. That is a contract that just, those uniforms really don't change for years and years. Those early mass-produced uniforms were basically like white blouses with simple solid jumpers and they were cut like sacks. They were really simple clothes that were easy to churn out.

And boy, does Eisenberg churn them out. One of the reasons I think that things take off after World War II is that you get this visual explosion, right? You have the camera and you have pictures in the newspaper and magazines. It became this trope of like the gaggle of Catholic schoolgirls, like taking the bus to school. And suddenly Catholics are seeing each other and orders are seeing each other and saying, oh, this is what is happening.

Catholic clothing started to cohere into an identity. And by the 1960s, that identity was...

plaid a lot of these parochial schools are irish catholic that could have been a reason for the plaid but also that it was just a popular trend in u.s culture at that time was the plaid but i believe that the plaid becomes more prominent in the 60s because of a man whose name i always butcher because it's kind of weird but benninger

Benninger, Benninger. I'm saying Benninger. George Bendinger. It's a different uniform company, and that's a decision to move in the tartan or plaid direction. This guy developed a genius plan of creating an individual tartan for every school. So you could show off what specific parochial school you went to.

through your uniform. And by the end of the 1960s, Catholicism is increasingly

something that Americans want to show off. Professor McNulty was also telling us about the ways in which Catholics, specifically Catholic school kids, were really prominently displayed in the media as a way of fighting communism. If communism is godless, then uniforms are full of God. And obviously communist Russia was secular, right? Yeah, it was just this idea of we have religious freedom, we let these Catholics be here.

And so something that happens that historians have identified is that where Catholics had kind of been on the margins of society, they were cultural outsiders. They become cultural insiders in the Cold War period. Around this time, Kennedy is about to become president, a Catholic president.

It's starting to become clear that maybe Catholicism is not so much of a threat to the American project. There's a sense of like, well, look to the parochial schools, look how orderly. It's kind of like they had won the discipline wars. Like, look how disciplined and obedient the kids are in those spaces. So then public schools got to thinking, hmm...

uniforms. We should be doing it more like that. Especially because increasingly public schools were starting to be seen as chaotic. And then as there becomes more and more concern about school disorder, which is a side note, is really often just channeling anxiety about social change. And then the threat becomes much more like non-white, particularly black and brown children. And the school uniform arises to combat this so-called threat.

The question is, how legal is it? Is imposing a uniform or even a dress code a suppression of free speech? Really? After the break? My hair was really short for a long time. And then during the pandemic, it grew out and I was like, oh, I like this. And I suddenly felt like really proud of it.

But now I, my hair is not growing as thick or as long or as full as I want it to, especially in the summer with hot days and humid nights and nonstop running around. The heat actually increases hair shedding, which I've definitely noticed. Yeah, let's see. How many do I take? Take four capsules once daily with a meal. For best results, take for a minimum of three to six months and beyond.

Nutrafol is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand trusted by over one and a half million people. Anything truly worthwhile takes time and effort and with Nutrafol see thicker, stronger, faster growing hair and less shedding in just three to six months.

For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering listeners of articles of interest $10 off your first month subscription and free shipping when you go to Nutrafol.com and enter the promo code articles. Find out why Nutrafol is the best selling hair growth supplement brand at Nutrafol.com spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L.com promo code articles. That's Nutrafol.com promo code articles.

In the early days of the American public school system, there was this big question around discipline. How will we make the children behave? Horace Mann is like, we're not going to use the crude instruments of corporal punishment, but like scientifically, that's not how you shape kids' behavior.

Dr. Rachel Lissy, once again. It starts even in the earliest public schools. There was a sense of like, the best way to shape behavior is through relationship. And this aligns with the feminizing of teaching, I should also just say. But if we have these female teachers that are like mommies to their classroom, kids will not want to disappoint their mommies. If every classroom has a female teacher who we can pay half as much, so it's very convenient, then kids will want to please them. And that's how we'll create order in the classroom. By this logic...

No one would think that you could punish a kid by kicking them out of school. Why would you suspend a kid? Because then you're removing them from the supervision of this system. Right, you'd be casting your child out. Exactly, exactly, right? So that we have this responsibility and we should be, if anything, we should be, you know, institutionalizing the kid. We should be increasing our control over them, not relinquishing it. And then there was this massive shift. In the late 1950s, early 1960s, where we shifted kids

in both our policy and our rhetoric. So I really focus in on a set of incidents that started with this incident in 1957. Okay, so this happened in New York in a public school.

Where a kid who was 17 years old, he was actually truant at the time, so he wasn't enrolled in any school. He had recently returned from a psychiatric facility. But he goes, he's been having some issues with another student outside of class. And he goes into this kid's classroom in his school in Brooklyn and he throws a bottle of lye. And he threw it on this other kid's face.

nearly blinds this kid. It splatters on other kids and burns them. Two teachers go to help. They also get injured as well. This kid's name was Maurice Kessler, and the incident was largely known as the Kessler Lie Incident. It gets picked up by the Southern press.

And the Southern press comes out and they say, "Do you see what's happening in Brooklyn? That's what happens when you try to integrate." And the Kessler lie incident became this massive blow up because the kid in question, Maurice Kessler, was Black. And the kid that he attacked was white. And it gets written up in all the papers. The South is like, "See, we know how to run our schools just fine. Like, we don't have these accidents."

So this is a New York story, but really this is a national story because everybody is really glomming onto what's happening in this liberal hotbed. I think there's something unique about the sort of New York in the national imagination, so to speak.

They're not actually concerned about what's happening in the New York City public schools. They want New York to look bad. And so this becomes a way to not only be like, disorder is because of schools, not because we've created this unjust system and there's lack of support in housing and the segregation. And it has nothing to do with those things. It's because the school is incompetent. And also, this is about crime. This isn't just childish misbehavior. And so...

This case gets put before this judge named Samuel Leibowitz. Like, this kid had really bad luck. Judge Samuel Leibowitz was like...

a real larger-than-life personality. Who has been waiting for a case like this his whole dang, dang life. Like, he is a really charismatic guy with a lot of thoughts. Just basically talking about how the city's approach to juvenile delinquency is psychiatric mumbo-jumbo, and it's, like, the soft-in-the-head of the approach, and it's coddling kids, and what kids really need is, like, a return to good old-fashioned hierarchical discipline. You know, he says, like, the strap. They need the old strap behind the woodshed. This is when...

We get the policy of widespread, sometimes causeless, suspension. So this suspension policy change that happens following this unwanted kind of national attention, the Board of Ed says, principals, you can suspend kids. Just send them home. We'll figure out what to do with them later.

At the time, this seemed like totally crazy to people. They were like, why would you kick kids out of school? Right. We're trying to get them to school. Right. But this is going to be really important to the idea of how schools function. And in basically the beginning of 1958, a year after this terrible incident happens, the suspension policy is made permanent.

And the superintendent comes out and he makes this announcement. He says something like, it's important that a principal have the authority to say to a youngster, young man, you get out of here. We cannot have you disturbing the other youngsters. So you see this like real sense of like, we're not talking about children. It's these almost adults and this very punitive idea of like some kids are good, some kids are bad. It starts to become more and more normal to just kick kids out of school because

It's sort of the origin of like, oh, there are bad apples in these schools. And this shift towards criminalizing is counteracted by a shift towards having a clear codification of students' rights. There's parts of it that sort of kick off in response to Vietnam and also like civil rights protests. But it was this idea of like, I can wear an anti-war symbol and I have rights to do that. The kind of classic, and it's like a uniform thing too with Tinker and Des Moines. ♪

There's this case, Tinker v. Des Moines, wherein a young teenage student wore a black armband to school to protest the Vietnam War, to show mourning for the people that had been lost in the Vietnam War on both sides. It's a public school. Yes, this is a public school district.

Her name was Mary Beth Tinker. Yeah, you met Mary Beth. Yes, yes. I was really shy. I was 13 years old. I was nervous and scared the day that I wore a black armband to school, but it was part of a group project called Iowans for Peace. Mary Beth Tinker was one of a number of students in her Des Moines public school who were going to wear these black armbands to advocate for peace. And it didn't seem like there was anything against their school dress code in that.

because they allowed black armbands in the Des Moines schools if you were sad about the football game. - Very importantly in this case, the armband was not a distracting feature added to her clothing. It didn't have any text on it even. There was nothing disruptive about this.

form of protest. It was very understated. But then the principals heard about it and then they made a rule against black armbands. All the students that wore the armband to school were suspended. Five kids were suspended, but I learned a lesson. Even if you're shy and scared and even sometimes you might back down, you can still make a difference because here we are still talking about it 55 years later.

So this was an infringement on the students' right to free speech, right? So with the help of the ACLU, they sue the school district because of this suspension. And they won. So in the Tinker ruling, the Supreme Court said, yes, you have free speech rights in public school, but you cannot substantially disrupt school. So this...

both open the door to set a precedent for what students have the right to do, but then also kind of open a door for schools to be like,

okay, we're going to have overarching rules. We're happy to work with you on laying out these students' rights, but we also want to be able to lay out these responsibilities. And the responsibilities is what becomes elaborated into this discipline code. And when I was talking to Rachel Lissy, she showed me this code of conduct that applies to a lot of New York public schools. And there are two pages of like students' rights and then 40 pages of things you're

not allowed to do. It's like 40 pages of this very minutia of discipline code. And this represents another deep philosophical change in the way that American public schools are administered. Teachers basically exchanged being in loco parentis for bureaucracy. There's one way of understanding this, which is students clamored for this. They wanted codes. Parents wanted to be able to say, why are you suspending my kid? And they wanted more bureaucratic codes.

ways of saying it's because they violated this thing rather than more amorphous, they misbehaved. In some ways it's easier instead of being like, well, because I said so, or like, I don't like that. You can't be a parent anymore. You have to cite Article 112 in the rule book.

So like, hey, don't blame me. I'm not a parent. Just look at the code. And the code, it will tell you what they did. Does it say anything about clothes in the code? It sure does. Wearing apparel that is unsafe or materially disruptive to the educative process. A little subjective. So that is infraction number eight in...

This is 2001. This is a low level infraction. This is a level one or two, but one of the things in all of these codes is that multiple level ones and twos can become level fours and fives. So if you repeatedly have the issue over time, that becomes a thing. Obviously this creates so many levels of

of consequences and is one of the reasons that we have the school to prison pipeline in the United States. School to prison pipeline has become a very popular term, but essentially it talks about a collection of punitive rules that discipline kids for what is deemed improper behavior, but really just pushes them into a system in which

the sort of punitive rules become the norm. I talked to Dr. Dewitt Scott, who is based in Chicago. My name is Dewitt Scott. I am the director for the Angelina Pedroso Center for Diversity and Intercultural Affairs at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. So I always felt that mandating uniforms, particularly in public schools, has

never really been the answer. We can see this sprouting a lot from the policies created in the 90s. The President of the United States. So in 1996, President Clinton gave an address in which he offered uniforms as a potential solution to violence in public schools. I challenge all our schools to teach character education, to teach good values and good citizenship.

And if it means that teenagers will stop killing each other over designer jackets, then our public schools should be able to require their students to wear school uniforms. I mean, it is bonkers to dedicate time in the State of the Union to school uniforms.

This creates a wave of schools implementing harsher dress codes and eventually public schools implementing uniforms. Instituting the uniforms just overall didn't achieve what Clinton felt it would achieve. I think it gave schools another reason to penalize students. You have students who would get penalized for not having the right shirt, not having the right belt, not having their shirt tucked in, not having the right shoes, not having the right color shoes. It created another door

for more rules. Even what Bill Clinton said specifically is very racialized. And the places where these uniforms are implemented are largely in Black communities. There was a charter school. I'm not going to name the school, but it's a prominent charter school in Chicago. I'll say that much. I don't know if they do this now, but this had to be 10 years ago. If a student

was out of uniform, then they got a financial penalty. A dollar for the wrong shirt, five dollars for Nobel, so on and so forth. I had a nephew who was at that school and at the end of the semester he had a $600 plus bill his mom couldn't pay him. This becomes tuition.

I feel like that also goes back to the other thing Bill Clinton said in that paragraph, which actually I'd never read the full speech, but he's talking about charter schools. I challenge every state to give all parents the right to choose which public school their children will attend and to let teachers form new schools with a charter they can keep only if they do a good job.

Yeah, totally. I think that when you see kids in uniforms, they're usually charter school kids, specifically in New York. In the early 2000s charter school ed reform, one of the ideas was every parent gets to pick the school that's the right fit.

And so this is a way of marketing. Almost in the same way that Catholic uniforms first came about as like marketing. You know, especially in charter schools where they're not just relying on public funds, but they have to get funders. If you're a funder and you go into a building and you see all these kids in these cute little bow ties, that feels good. It sort of goes back to this American tradition of, it's almost like the Native American boarding schools, like making kids all look in a way that makes middle class values feel right and comfortable. You've taken all this chaos...

and you've turned it into this order, you must be doing good work here. And the message became that if you don't want a uniform, parents, maybe your kids just shouldn't go to this school. Because if you really don't want the uniform, this is just not the right fit. And what we want their parents to recognize is they should go back out into the marketplace and shop someplace else. But each school does not have the responsibility to be able to teach every kid that walks in the door. They only have the responsibility to teach the kids that are the right fit.

and uniforms becomes one way of filtering. If you're not organized enough to make sure you have the uniforms and you get here on time, then you're probably not the right fit. This is a very classic charter thing, is like, we're suspending kids because it's not the right fit.

So like when we talk about school uniforms, we're talking about a really broad swath and they can definitely be wielded as punishment. I think that they are pretty superficial and very racialized and class based. But I also think that and Rachel Lissy said as much, she was like, if the school has a good culture, if it is a place that people are excited to be a part of.

They can function like team uniforms. I think if you have a good, strong culture already and you've done all of that work, uniforms can help in strengthening that identity and that culture. Like people can be really amped on their uniform. There are schools that love their uniforms, which is why I also think that like a cute uniform is kind of important, that it's not just like shut up.

sit over there, wear this bland shirt. And it just seems like the common thread throughout all of this is like no one asked the kids. That's exactly what Mary Beth Tinker said as well. I think it should be up to students how the dress code is expressed in their school and that students should have some say.

So students, I think, should be on the school boards. They should be voting members. They should be in the administrative committees of their schools. Children should have a voice. They have their own opinions and their own thoughts about what they want to wear. All right. Hey, kids. I'm here to talk to you.

Grace intrepidly went to talk to some real life high schoolers. I like the uniform. It's really easy to decide what I'm going to wear in the morning. I don't mind it. No, it's fine. I wish that we only had one skirt so we didn't have to buy twice as many skirts. That's my main complaint. Would I rather wear sweatpants and a sweatshirt every day? Absolutely. But, you know, it's fine. And these high schoolers actually go to Grace's own high school. Wow, this is so nice. Oh my gosh, this was my Latin room. So tell me about going back to Aquinas. What was it like?

It was really weird, obviously, because it's my high school. I found it interesting that you were doing a piece on school uniforms because, um,

You always had your creative flair. And I'm talking to my principal, who I will never call Leslie. My name is Leslie Mitros, and I was head of school for the last 20 years here at Aquinas Academy in Pittsburgh. And we have learned some things along the way, Grace, that's for sure. Yeah, it sounds like things have changed in a very positive way.

The uniform did, in fact, change a lot. Like, I was required to wear a blazer in high school. And now, instead of the blazer, they have a quarter zip. The girls in particular didn't love the blazer. So I said, well, why don't you write me a proposal for something that's an alternative?

And so they did their research and they were actually the ones who proposed that sweater. Yeah, I mean it's so far from what we would have been allowed to wear in high school when I was there. And they're way less strict about the accessories. I can't think of the last time we were splitting hairs over earrings or even the number of piercings. You'll see that when you walk around. There's a lot of individuality there. When I was in school, they had a lot of problems with the way that they were enforcing the uniform.

specifically that the girls felt really uncomfortable. It made you feel like you were being looked at in a way that was inappropriate. The hardest part of it, to be honest with you, Grace, is that none of us are in the business of liking to embarrass kids. But at some point they need to kind of get that message that it's got to be

It's got to be right. It's a place of work. And we want to keep that in the front of their mind that when they come in the door to go to school, they're here for a reason. And it's to do the best they can academically. And I guess this is where I come down with it is like, no one should be punished so severely for what they wear.

I don't think accessories should be illegal. I don't think hair color should be illegal. I don't think it's about quashing expression. But I do think it's like a laboratory to practice speaking up and to practice having these debates. And like, I know we kind of joked in the beginning that maybe these things exist only to be debated. But I kind of think that all of this comes back to this notion of debate, not only because...

The uniform is such a classic debate, but that everything should be up for discussion. The uniform should be up for discussion. I think it was Dr. Scott who was like, "You don't just fix it and move on." Thinking about school uniforms, thinking about all of these policies, there'll never be a day where it's like, "Okay, great. That's done. Addressing these questions will bring new questions." You have to continue. You just have to revisit it. I don't know anything of significance in this world where it's just you get to a point and you stop. That's what it is to live in a society and to go to a school.

Yeah, I mean, I will say having to wear a uniform my whole life definitely shaped my style and my identity. Especially because, like, look, you're wearing a version of a school uniform right now. Did you do that intentionally? Yes. So for as much as I...

hated my school uniform. I did want to dress as close to it as possible today. As you can see, this is my actual vest from school, so it has the school emblem on it. Oh my god! It's so cute! Like, it's stylish! Well, the vest is, right? So there are all kinds of tips and tricks on how to make your uniform cuter.

Thank you so much to Grace Tarducci. What a dream to work with. Thank you for embarking on this project with me. Grace, as she mentioned, is an animator. See all of her animation at gracetarducci.com. And she made a little custom animation of all of the different uniforms throughout time. Like, her work is so great.

You can see that animation at articlesofinterest.substack.com. Many thanks as well to my fearless script editor, Alison Barringer. Thank you for putting your eyes on this. It's so good to work with you again, buddy.

Thank you so much also to Debbie Schaefer Jacobs at the Smithsonian. Your research was invaluable to this project. And thank you also to Prabal Gurung. What a dream to be able to interview this visionary designer. His story about Catholic school uniforms is just one of the many incredible tales of his life that you can read in his memoir, Walk Like a Girl by Prabal Gurung. It's out now. I can't recommend it enough. He's had an incredible life.

Also, huge thanks to our friends at American Public Media, APM. We worked with them on making a version of this show for kids. If you are a kid or you know a kid who is thinking about uniforms or have questions about where uniforms come from, the show is called Forever Ago, and it's really fun. It tends to be focused on younger kids, like this kid, Hannah, who I'm obsessed with. I think it's really fun.

I love Hannah. Ugh. So that show is called Forever Ago. Check it out.

And I'm going to make like two more episodes over the summer. And then in the fall, there'll be another proper season. So thank you for your patience, everyone. All your messages about like, when are you coming back? They're so, I mean, they stress me out, but they're really sweet. So thank you very much. It's nice to be back making podcasts. So thank you for listening. Radiotopia from PRX.