Getting rid of school uniforms

So I live in a Southern African country at this stage and also went to school here. It's part of the policy that kids should wear uniforms. I'll convert everything into US$ to make it easier. Now taking into consideration that most people live off of 10-12US$ a day and barely able to afford anything more than stable foods like bread and maize it's stupid for me to think a kid should still wear a uniform. You see to send a child to school with a uniform will roughly work out as follows: Shirt: 10US$ Pants: 15US$ Shoes: 25-35$ depending on size and quality of shoe. The more expensive, generally it lasted longer and generally it's more comfortable also. Tie: 5US$. Now adding up you get 55-75US$. That's for 1, yes one set of school uniform. You need at least 3-4 shirts and at least 2-3 pairs of pants. Shoes is a once off thing. However, bearing in mind that each of those items lasts for about a year, maybe more depending on growth. A parent is forced, and we've mainly got single mothers here because the dads make the child and run away. A parent is forced to fork out over a 100US$ every year. Which is a massive amount for most parents here who as I said can only afford the basics. In comparison normal civilian clothes are much cheaper. For instance a decent quality shirt can be bought for $5, pants 8$ and shoes also around 6-8$. Best of all is the child can also wear those clothes outside school. The reasoning so far is that if everyone wears the same the children won't feel 'out' between kids who's parents has a little more than the other. However, 90% of kids in any school has roughly the same background here. So imo the reasoning is quite skewed. So is it not maybe time that we scrap school uniforms in favour for normal civilian clothes?

Submitted August 06, 2018 at 11:12PM by DieAnder https://ift.tt/2M8gEgT