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Should Uniforms be Required in Public Schools

Right to expression: " Students can express themselves through bows, hairstyles, jewelry (necklaces, bracelets, ect.) headbands, and styles of ties...." School uniforms indeed encourage different ways of expression--but this nevertheless clashes against the uniform's goal at unifying everyone. People can still look to be economically different, some wearing more jewelry than other, some wearing more fancy ties than other. By limiting the self-expression, school uniforms defeats its own equality purpose. Bullies: My opponent concedes that uniforms does not necessarily halt bullying. Even experts say that uniforms won't stop bullying. [http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca...]. Thus, why must we go through the effort to change all the schools to require uniforms? It is too much effort. Only 16.5% of the public schools in US require a uniform. [http://www.infoplease.com...] Changing this policy would require meetings, discussing, agreement, and lots of money to buy all the uniforms from the school. While private schools may earn money, most public schools are free. Therefore there not only remains the problem of time and process needed to change this no-uniform policy, public schools would have problem garnering up enough money for buying uniforms every year for new students in the school. Distraction: " By implementing uniforms, kids will look the same...." Opponent contradicts himself. Uniforms do not change the students' physique. They will still be worried about looking fat. Uniforms do not solve the problem my opponent proposes. In addition, poor people will be unable to afford the uniforms at once. At the very least, uniforms cost way up to 100 pounds within Europe. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk...]. Keep in mind that my news article even sources the parents having to pay TWICE, meaning they had to pay a massive 200 pounds for the uniforms! The average cost of uniforms goes way up to $249 in America. [http://greatergreatereducation.org...] Thus those without uniforms cannot attend the school, or wear a slightly cheaper, different uniform, or even wear their usual clothes, yet still standing out within the crowd ever so more, destroying my opponent's "look the same" purpose yet again. Equally hot uniforms: "I do understand that." People still gonna "Stare" at each other as you said, regardless of what they wear. "Also, it is possible to have free dress days once a month." Ah, see? School uniforms are so restricting even my opponent thinks that they shouldn't be required all the time. My opponent gives us two statistic websites, yet do not tell us what they show and why they are credible. I expect my opponent to be the person telling us WHAT these websites show and WHY they are important, contribute to his arguments, and are trustworthy. You cannot merely say "oh, here's some statistics to show uniforms are good", and expect us to come to conclusions. In addition, causation does not show correlation, and neither vice versa. Just because violence happened to drop and school performance increased, does not attribute merely to school uniforms. We don't know if JUST the school uniforms caused these statistics. There are many other variables involved. Maybe the school added cameras? Security guards? Hired better teachers? Contacted the police more? Or maybe it's just because the school themselves are good and they are naturally improving? We don't know if the experimental data my opponent has shown is trustworthy or not. Who knows whether long-beach schools with uniforms improve on their own and our public schools just doesn't have the support to improve their security? There are too much questions and doubt within my opponent's statistics. Without outright explaining why the sources help his case and why they are credible, his statistics are moot. Back to you, my opponent.