THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 28, 1995 TAG: 9504280004
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A16 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines
Do clothes make the student? No. But a committee of parents, teachers, students, administrators and principals studying ways to reduce discipline problems in Norfolk's schools suggests that school uniforms may make students behave and learn better. Many parents agree.
Anecdotal evidence supports them. So does the General Assembly: It just this year approved legislation authorizing school districts throughout Virginia to introduce uniforms in schools where enough parents agree. Parents' involvement is crucial.
It's crucial to the success of any remedy for school discipline problems. That's a truism the committee notes in other recommended approaches to lessening disruption and improving learning in Norfolk's schoolrooms. Among them: separate classes for boys and girls, more alternative classes for disruptive students, a meeting between parents and school officials before a suspended child can be reinstated, and court sanctions for parents who refuse to cooperate in disciplining disruptive children. School Superintendent Roy Nichols suggests an intriguing step further in parental participation: requiring parents of unruly students to attend class with them.
Many of the committee's suggestions will spur controversy, particularly those that smack of penalizing parents for children's behavior, sticking poor parents with high costs, labeling a child for life or denying him equal opportunity and individuality.
But study after study shows that the main factor in a child's success in school is not per-pupil spending or class size or teacher pay. It's parental attention to a child's schoolwork, not to her closet.
The customary cost of a school year's worth of uniforms is less than the price of fancy sneakers. Private businesses have proved eager in many communities to foot the bill when parents cannot. And individuality is not so much curbed as channeled into more constructive pursuits than wardrobe competition.
A disruptive child is not only missing his education but denying his classmates theirs. They count, too. In a regular classroom, they count more.
The separation of students by gender, particularly in the grammar grades, has proved beneficial to both boys and girls, particularly to boys whose single custodial parent is Mom.
Schools have no perfect remedies for imperfect homes, but somehow they have to work back to basic values, one of which is learning to behave in school. Another is earning the respect for self, and the genuine respect of others, that come from achievement, not from apparel. A third is parents' responsibility for influencing and improving student conduct by their own expectations and example. It's a responsibility that comes with parents' right to a public-school education for their kids. by CNB