School Uniforms: Boon or Bane?

                                                           By: Nisya Alindra S. CS4

Do you prefer styling your own outfit for school or simply going with the school uniform? Education has always played a big role throughout the century, and as time passes, there are always ways to improve its quality. For instance, research and surveys have been conducted to investigate whether wearing school uniforms has effects on improving education quality. So, is it really?

In Indonesia, the majority of schools require students to wear school uniforms. The benefit of this is that students do not have to think about what outfit they are going to wear to school, making the students more focused on their studies rather than on their appearance. Moreover, wearing the same clothes as others enhances unity and equality. Along with reducing the gap in living standards between students. In some cases, individuals that are not wealthy enough to afford nice and branded clothes will be peer-pressured and it is also common for bullying to occur because of this. Furthermore, the school uniform policy has been proven to improve discipline, as students are obliged to appear tidy, wearing the complete uniform set, all the time. 

On the contrary, instructing students to wear school uniforms is said to limit students’ freedom of expression, since they are not able to dress as they want. Some suffer from lack of confidence at school for not being allowed to select clothes that suit their body types. What is more, school uniform rules add to the strict and serious atmosphere in school where students will feel restrained.

Given these points, the positive sides of dressing in school uniform do reflect well on education, it delivers a better learning environment for the school body. Still and all, schools should not limit and control their students too much so that schools can become a more engaging place to learn.

In SHB Cambridge we all follow strict uniform specifications on some days, like every 1^st, 3^rd & 5^th Fridays of the month we all wear Batik and on 2^nd & 4^th Fridays we wear our blue SHB polo shirt while the teachers wear Batik.

We love it this way!