In article ,
wrote:
On Monday, 9 September 2019 16:02:47 UTC+1, NY wrote:
"Steve Walker" wrote in message
...

One idea was it stopped kids being identified as coming from rich or
poor families by what they wore. And a uniform gives an identity to
all.

I went to a school with a uniform. Most things were fairly anonymous
and you could buy them anywhere. The only thing that was unique was
the blazer. You could buy it from the school shop or from one specific
gents' outfitters in town. There was still a gradation of poor/rich,
based on the grade of blazer that your parents bought you: a "cheap"
felt-like material or "expensive" worsted barathea. It was still more
or less the same style and cut, the same colour (bottle green), same
"silver" buttons, and with the same school badge on the breast pocket,
but the gradation of the type of material still sorted the sheep from
the goats ;-)

In other words, if you try to make everyone the same, they'll *still*
find a way to look for differences and better/worse distinctions ;-)

My blazer suffered a slight "accident" when someone held a lit Bunsen
burner under the elbow during Chemistry. My mum got special permission
from school to put on leather elbow patches (still a matching shade of
green) to hide the singe mark.

Kids aren't so clueless that they can't work out who is poor & who isn't,
uniform or not.

At boarding school, one of my contemporaries parents stayed in a caravan -
rather than an hotel - when the came to visit. Everyone assumed family
poverty. Totally untrue - they just liked caravanning.

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle