Claire London CAPS #1

My identity is important to me.  Some things I can’t change but some things I do have a say in.  Identity is defined as “the concept of who we are” (Martin and Nakayama, 2013).  The concept of who we are should be very important to us.  Many follow the motto of ‘who cares what they think’. Those who are referred to as they in this motto have a different perspective on that person’s identity.  Who we think we are can be very different as who others perceive us to be. 

There are three different perspectives on identity: social science, interpretive, and critical perspectives.  Social science is the identity we create by ourselves when we want to relate to a group.  Interpretive is an identity formed when you communicate with others.  Critical is identity that is shaped through social structure (Martin and Nakayama, 2013).

I chose to discuss an article from a blog on edubabbling.com.  The article is titled “The Great School Uniform Debate!” and you can rightfully assume the topic discussed is school uniforms.  I thought this was a great article to research and report on for the identity chapter because both sides argue that uniforms affect children’s identity either in a positive or negative way.  A few positive points made in this article argue that there is a lesser financial burden for families, less bullying in schools, and a reduced amount of stress in the household before the school-day.  As fashions are constantly evolving, it is a valid point that buying one or multiple outfits of the same style for a child would be cheaper. Since everyone is wearing the same thing, literally, fashion won’t be an issue, therefore, parents will never have to update their child’s school clothes.  Unless, however, they outgrow them.  This is unfortunately inevitable. Another positive is better academic performance since less attention is drawn towards appearance.  Also, bullying due to appearance will be reduced because everybody is wearing the exact same thing.  Lastly, since the children don’t have to decide the outfit of the day, there will be little to no fighting over outfits. The opposing side argues that it would put a bigger financial burden on families, decrease academic success, and restrict a child’s creativity.  The biggest argument here is that of restricting a child’s creativity.  Without letting a child express his/her identity, the child has no freedom of expression. 

Although I am in favor of school uniforms, this is not a persuasive post.  This debate really brings to light how we can encourage/retard the concept of expressing identity to children. The majority of these conflicts deal with social and cultural identities.  When wearing a uniform, is a child able to express their ethnic, age, or even personal identities?  For example, at my Catholic elementary school a boy in kindergarten wore the same thing as a boy in eighth grade.  Dressing your age is nearly impossible when the uniform rule is enforced.  Likewise, how can you express your personal identity? What if you really like the color pink but had to wear a uniform and black shoes.  On the contrary, uniforms are a critical way to encourage children to think of their own ways to express their identities.  These are a few identities that can help us understand how uniforms can affect our children. 

So, what lesson can we learn from this? If one day we were forced to wear uniforms to our college classes, what would our reaction be?  Just like these children, we would have to find different ways to express who we are.  We know who we are, but we have to find ways to make an impression on the outside world.

The link to the blog post: http://www.edubabbling.com/the-great-school-uniform-debate/

At the bottom of the post you can find a poll asking if you agree or disagree with uniforms.

 

 

Martin, J.N., & Nakayama, T.K. (2013). Intercultural communication in contexts (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

Dean (2013). The Great School Uniform Debate. 5 October 2013. http://www.edubabbling.com/the-great-school-uniform-debate/