School Uniforms

How uniforms shaped the American school system. Images and a very special animation at articlesofinterest.substack.com https://articlesofinterest.substack.com/ Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Avery Trufelman?

  When I first met you, when you came up to me after a talk I gave and pitched this story idea, in my mind, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, you were wearing like fuzzy leg warmers and a little skirt. Does this sound right?

• 0:16Speaker 01

  That is close because I do remember exactly what I was wearing because I thought about it. I had this fuzzy knit skirt and a trench coat. And I think I was wearing really tall boots.

• 0:30Avery Trufelman?

  Okay, you have a very unique sense of style.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Well, thank you.

• 0:34Avery Trufelman?

  Which is all just framing to say I'm kind of surprised you grew up with a uniform.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Yes, my name is Grace Tarducci. I am an independent filmmaker and animator and a former Catholic school student. So I went to Catholic school from kindergarten to 12th grade. And my style identity was very closely tied to my personal identity at the time, which was definitely like rebelling. And so I was pretty good at experimenting with what was technically within the bounds of the dress code as was written, but was still pushing it too far.

• 1:20Avery Trufelman?

  You can't have been the only one messing with the, the whole thing is like Catholic schoolgirls roll up their skirts. Like surely everybody was doing this.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Yes, obviously. That is a typical thing to do. Everyone pretty much does that. And I would very much over accessorize my uniform, like wearing a lot of jewelry or trying to get away with patterned tights. And I would dye my hair a lot and heavy makeup, you know, peace, love and rock and roll over here. And they really did not know what to do. Like I was getting in trouble so much. They hired a dean of discipline at the school and they said that was partially because of my uniform infractions. And the first thing that he ever had to do formally at the school

• 2:08Speaker 01

  was take me aside into a room and tell me I had to dye my hair to a natural color.

• 2:14Avery Trufelman?

  What color was it?

• 2:16Speaker 01

  It was red and it wasn't even that bad. Like I've had purple hair before. It was red and I was very offended and I wrote a speech about it.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  I said in my essay that I felt like that was patronizing to us, that we wouldn't be able to do our schoolwork because someone had red hair. I remember feeling offended by that language.

• 2:41Avery Trufelman?

  Okay, so the only thing more classic than like being a Catholic schoolgirl and rebelling against the dress code is then participating in the argument about the dress code.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  I think Grove should dump the uniforms and we have casual dress all year round.

• 2:54Avery Trufelman?

  It's in The Princess Diaries.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  I feel like I was actually thinking about Princess Diaries because they had a really similar dress code to us in that movie.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  What's my point again? You like our uniforms. They're equalizers.

• 3:05Avery Trufelman?

  It's just like such a classic debate question.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. I mean, perhaps it's a common trope because teenagers in general are rebelling and questioning these pretty arbitrary rules that have been set by adults that we're now realizing are flawed, right?

• 3:26Avery Trufelman?

  I didn't grow up having a uniform. When you said your uniform is like the Princess Diaries uniform, immediately my thought was like, oh, cute. Like, I love it. I was always so jealous of people who wore uniforms. I think that uniforms are fundamentally pretty great, and it's a lot of other stuff that society has put on uniforms that need to be removed. But the clothes themselves are like a wonderful idea.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. But no.

• 3:53Avery Trufelman?

  No. After the break, Grace and I explore the uniform. Sure, the question of whether to have a uniform or not to have a uniform, but really to talk about how the idea of school uniforms came to impact American public education.

• 4:10Speaker 04

  Hey there, it's Robyn from PRX. If you're a longtime listener of Radiotopia, you may know that we had a podcast that ran from 2016 to 2020 discussing every episode of the show The West Wing. Well, I'm excited to tell you The West Wing Weekly is back. Joshua Molina, who starred on The West Wing as Will Bailey, and Rishikesh Hirway, creator and host of Song Exploder, have reunited to discuss the hit Netflix political thriller The Diplomat. Just as they did in their original run, they're discussing each episode of the series in sequence, joined by special guests from the show and from the real world of diplomacy. Rishi and Josh will be wrapping up the first season with a special live taping at Union Chapel in London on November 14th. Subscribe now to The West Wing Weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

• 4:56Speaker 05

  I have no issues with the uniforms and everything.

• 4:58Avery Trufelman?

  Really?

• 4:59Speaker 05

  Like, you know, I've always had issues with being confined to a box.

• 5:02Avery Trufelman?

  So I had the chance of talking to the designer Prabha Gurung.

• 5:05Speaker 05

  I'm Prabha Gurung. I am a fashion designer.

• 5:08Avery Trufelman?

  Big deal designer, dressed all kinds of amazing celebrities.

• 5:12Speaker 05

  Oprah, Michelle Obama, Sarah Jessica, Kate Middleton. It's amazing. I'm grateful for that. It was my impossible dream to become a designer.

• 5:20Avery Trufelman?

  He grew up in Nepal.

• 5:22Speaker 05

  Living back home in Nepal where those dreams about fashion was not only ridiculous, but was impossible. The thing about Nepal is it is a really beautifully mystical, magical place. When you're growing up, if you were someone like me who had this ambition and desire to push myself, it was really like confining.

• 5:42Avery Trufelman?

  He went to a Catholic school in Nepal. What was the uniform you had to wear at Xavier's?

• 5:47Speaker 05

  Confining, restrictive, boring.

• 5:50Avery Trufelman?

  What?

• 5:51Speaker 05

  Yawn inducing. I'll just put it this way. So I'll explain. White shirt, navy blue trouser with a navy blue blazer with gold buttons, black shoes. And it was so boring. It really felt like, where am I? Am I ever going to be able to shine? I could see my mother transform herself with the red lipstick and the bindi and the tikka and all of that stuff. And I was like, can I be like that too?

• 6:16Avery Trufelman?

  When Prabha Gurung was growing up, he was teased pretty mercilessly for being gay. But he would watch his mom do her makeup and put on saris. And sometimes she'd say like, do you want to try it on?

• 6:29Speaker 05

  I would nod my head vigorously. And listen, I think she probably let me because I think she knew I was how troubled I was. So whatever joy I could derive from anything, she allowed me.

• 6:39Avery Trufelman?

  And so he understood how good it felt to wear beautiful clothes, just at home. He couldn't really go out in them.

• 6:45Speaker 05

  I was simply fascinated by the colors, the ruffles. And I trying on my mom's sari or bangles, which were massive on my tiny hand. But the jangling of the sound.

• 6:55Avery Trufelman?

  He was just like, I love clothes. I love the way this feels. And he even said he would see the Catholic schoolgirls like rolling up their skirts and be like, that looks fun. I want to do that.

• 7:05Speaker 05

  As they leave their house, it gets rolled up. My was like, if they're allowed to do it, why not me?

• 7:10Avery Trufelman?

  But there really wasn't any culture of pushing back from the boys. And so he quietly had an alternative version of his uniform made.

• 7:19Speaker 05

  I had it made. I was like over the holiday.

• 7:22Avery Trufelman?

  It was like a similar color of the shirt, but it felt really nice on his skin.

• 7:28Speaker 05

  It almost was like silk and everyone else was cotton. And I was like, it was notorious. I used to get in trouble all the time. And towards the end of it, I started wearing blue eyeshadows and wearing mascara. I was just like, you know, listen, I'm getting bullied. I'm getting no matter what. I was just like, fuck it, you know, I'm just gonna go full on. I don't even care.

• 7:45Avery Trufelman?

  But I asked him, so it sounds like you weren't that into uniforms. He was like, oh, no.

• 7:49Speaker 05

  I'm glad I did.

• 7:50Avery Trufelman?

  Really?

• 7:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm glad I did because it allowed me to really explore the possibility of defining how I present myself to the world. It really taught me the idea of rules, regulations, and how far I can push it and how far I can't. It really defines who I am as a person now. I understand the value of uniform, like I get it. When I think about it, not everyone in that school came from wealth and access. So uniforms, sometimes it is an equalizer, but let's not be fools.

• 8:22Avery Trufelman?

  You can't hide the fact that we live in an unequal society.

• 8:25Speaker 05

  Even as kids, we know who's rich, who's not. We pretty much know by the shoes that they wear, by the pen that they write with, the food that they bring, the water bottle they carry. So we know who's rich and who's not.

• 8:37Avery Trufelman?

  But I still say, if you can limit the factors that create an unequal society in school, why not? I don't know. I just felt like in school, everything was a competition, like looking at who had what pencil case or who had what pants. And it's like, okay, I'd rather it only be about socks or barrettes or like whatever tiny thing. I know that it's not gonna make the issue go away. It's deeper than that.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah, let's limit the factors because kids are horrible anyway, right? So like if we have less things to bully each other about, maybe that's a good thing. But then my question to that would be, why does it look like this then? I'm gonna give you two pictures, okay? And I want you to describe. What the person is wearing in these pictures. So this first picture is from 1971 and is of my Aunt Patty. And we went to the same elementary school, okay?

• 9:30Avery Trufelman?

  See, I'm like, I think she looks so cute. She's wearing a plaid jumper with a white shirt.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Okay, now, this one is from 2006 or 2007, and it's me. What uniform am I wearing?

• 9:46Avery Trufelman?

  You are wearing a plaid jumper with a white shirt under it. Okay, it's basically the same.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  It's like the same exact thing, and it's the same colors. And we're wearing the same undershirt. It's more than 30 years apart. It's the exact same outfit. And I think that is my big why here in general. Like, why is it this like prep school, Eurocentric looking fit? That hasn't changed since the 60s. Why do we have every single kid in a polo?

• 10:17Avery Trufelman?

  Well, it should be said that, Larry, the kids on my block, we should have walked by the school on my block. They do wear like tracksuits. So I think that is increasingly a move to have kids just wear like uniforms that are comfortable to them. But you're right, this other antiquated uniform still persists.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  I guess we should talk about where it comes from in the history, right? Um, you think? Okay.

• 10:43Speaker 06

  I was looking at yearbooks and the girls aren't wearing uniforms. And I'm like, wow, this is really weird. Like, maybe they got permission that day and they weren't, they didn't have to wear the uniforms in 1917, 1918. I'm not seeing these uniforms. And then suddenly I see the uniforms and I'm like, oh, what's happened? What's changed?

• 11:04Avery Trufelman?

  Sally Dwyer-McMillian is a professor at Marist University, who we went to speak to.

• 11:08Speaker 06

  My book is Common Threads: A Cultural History of Clothing in American Catholicism.

• 11:16Avery Trufelman?

  There's this long history in European Catholicism of sisters opening asylums and charities.

• 11:22Speaker 06

  Where I first saw uniforms in Catholic institutions. It had to do with charitable institutions and it was asylums and children in asylums, where parents could drop their kids off and maybe they couldn't take care of them.

• 11:37Avery Trufelman?

  Often, these quote unquote "uniforms" were just simple dark clothes.

• 11:42Speaker 06

  I haven't seen many pictures of asylum children, but the descriptions seem to be more like a smock.

• 11:49Avery Trufelman?

  Just to sort of get the kids in something.

• 11:52Speaker 06

  The church saw that these children need some kind of parenting and care. But they also wanted to identify these children and want to kind of mark these children, because kids ran away from these asylums as well.

• 12:05Avery Trufelman?

  And that tradition continued in Catholic-run charities in the United States.

• 12:10Speaker 06

  They do open asylums for children. New York City had a really significant asylum.

• 12:16Avery Trufelman?

  But that's not exactly a school uniform as such.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  The first instance of a school uniform in the United States would be in what were called "federal Indian boarding schools."

• 12:30Speaker 06

  A segment of sisters or priests or brothers felt as though like, okay, this is our mission. We're going to provide education to Native American kids. But at the same time, also thinking that these kids weren't capable in the same way that white children were.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  So these schools were implemented for the purpose of taking cultural identity away from Native children in order to Europeanize them.

• 12:56Speaker 06

  Stripping those Native American kids of their identity and language and customs.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Their hair was cut, their traditional outfits were taken, and they were put into these militaristic uniforms that were supposed to make everyone look the same.

• 13:13Speaker 06

  You know, that kind of homogenizing.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  That's where we first see a school uniform being implemented in the United States.

• 13:22Speaker 06

  First, it's in charitable institutions where they're in uniforms. And then I also start to see, and I would call this more a dress code, in elite, select schools.

• 13:33Speaker 07

  A lot of those asylums and charities were funded from the tuitions that nuns charged to rich families.

• 13:40Speaker 06

  Sisters have to sustain themselves, unlike Europe, where these convents have been around for centuries. In the United States, it's just like a clean slate here.

• 13:51Avery Trufelman?

  It's like a business.

• 13:51Speaker 06

  Right, yeah, that sounds like, kind of cold. But, but in a way, they have to figure out how they're gonna survive.

• 13:58Avery Trufelman?

  Something that really defines the American Catholic school movement is this like need to make money.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Well, these are proto-Catholic schools, right? Because they're not what we think of as Catholic schools now. So what you're referring to are the convent schools. It was just a very highbrow education for upper-class, privileged girls. They were run by nuns, and they had a dress code.

• 14:20Speaker 06

  We don't have the technology to really create a uniform, right?

• 14:25Avery Trufelman?

  I mean, this is so like, duh, but we take it for granted. The idea of a uniform relied on mass-produced clothing. That, it was almost impossible for uniforms to actually be uniform in the days before you could just buy something ready-made.

• 14:40Speaker 06

  Everyone's going to their tailor. But they had specificity, even a swatch of fabric that you would take to the tailor, and they have to adhere to that. So this one, this 1899.

• 14:52Avery Trufelman?

  It's just so not what we would think of as the archetypal Catholic school uniform.

• 14:57Speaker 06

  So she has a, it's a full, black skirt gathered at the waist, and then she has long sleeves.

• 15:04Avery Trufelman?

  I like a wicked witch of the West Halloween costume.

• 15:07Speaker 06

  Wicked witch of the West, yes, that's a tongue twister.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  They were more similar to what you would imagine a nun wearing than what you would imagine like a Catholic school girl wearing now.

• 15:20Speaker 06

  And they seemed to me to really prioritize, emphasize dark hues so that the students wouldn't display materialism vanity. And the sisters kind of have their eye on someone who might join the religious order.

• 15:35Avery Trufelman?

  What was kind of like preparing girls to like go into that life?

• 15:39Speaker 01

  There was an element of that. However, it was also a way of these sisters to gain funding for their convent.

• 15:49Speaker 06

  How will these elite schools, which again are supporting the sisters, going to remain open?

• 15:55Speaker 01

  And one of the ways they did that was with a very specific uniform. So they're really identifiable as Catholic schoolgirls.

• 16:03Speaker 06

  And so having this special uniform that sets them apart is a mark of their distinction and class, too, because this isn't crappy fabric. This is very nice clothing.

• 16:16Avery Trufelman?

  But Catholic schools, as we know them now, didn't really proliferate until public schools did. And in America, it took a surprisingly long time for public schools to get started.

• 16:27Speaker 07

  The early, our founding fathers, whatever that means, but our founding fathers, like Jefferson and Benjamin Rush and even George Washington, they all talked about, like, we need public schools.

• 16:39Avery Trufelman?

  I spoke to this historian and policy expert named Rachel Lissy. She was saying that from the very founding of the American experiment, our founding fathers always wanted to make a public school.

• 16:54Speaker 07

  But it didn't happen. The reason it didn't happen in the 18th century is because there wasn't like the political will for it. So the earliest schools in America were these sort of local schools that were referred to as district schools and parents would pay.

• 17:10Avery Trufelman?

  You used to have like a one-room schoolhouse, this journeyman teacher who would like go from town to town. He would teach your kids to read. Public education didn't happen, basically, until Catholics started coming to the US.

• 17:25Speaker 07

  The shift comes in the mid 19th century towards publicly funded schools. It wasn't really about academics. It was much more this idea that there were huge waves of Irish immigrants coming into America. And so we needed to create these public schools in order to Americanize all of these foreign-born, immoral folks coming from outside.

• 17:48Avery Trufelman?

  I think it was also this idea of keeping away the threat of monarchy that came from Catholicism.

• 17:54Speaker 07

  Public schools could accurately be described as Protestant schools.

• 17:59Avery Trufelman?

  When you think about it, the project of teaching children to read is a Protestant one.

• 18:05Speaker 07

  So that they can read the Bible is a very Protestant idea because the idea is like, we don't want you listening to the priest or the pope. Each individual student needs to have their own relationship with the Bible and with God that then is going to shape their moral behavior. So we need to not just intervene between these kids and their parents, but between these kids and the pope.

• 18:26Speaker 06

  Then the bishops decide that they don't want Catholic kids to be reading the King James Bible in the public school. They're concerned about paying taxes that go to these schools.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  The Catholic hierarchy demanded that Catholic children in the United States must have a Catholic education.

• 18:44Speaker 06

  There is a requirement. It's passed, it's the Third Plenary Council in 1884, where they determined that they're going to open their own schools.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  So this is why the parochial schools pop up and they're associated with the parish that you're a part of, which would be your church.

• 18:59Avery Trufelman?

  So it's not like an elite school. It's like, okay, you have to pay a little extra money, but it's still pretty affordable.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, these were largely affordable because the sisters were doing free labor.

• 19:09Avery Trufelman?

  And from the beginning of both the public school system and the Catholic parochial school system, the metric of success was not which system made smarter students.

• 19:21Speaker 07

  As schools were forming, the debates about how to shape behavior were much more intense than the debates about what kids were actually going to learn. Like, it was like, eh, they'll learn to read, they'll learn numbers. That wasn't the big focus.

• 19:33Avery Trufelman?

  It was about which school system made better Americans.

• 19:38Speaker 07

  It was also about teaching them the skills they'll need to fit in the economy in the right way. So they'll need to learn how to delay gratification and control their impulses.

• 19:46Avery Trufelman?

  Dr. Lissy told me that the idea of responding to bells is good preparation for future factory workers. That's so nuts, like that we had to run from classroom to classroom at the sound of a bell.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's really funny. And like probably adhering to like really rigid schedules too.

• 20:01Avery Trufelman?

  And meanwhile, on the Catholic side.

• 20:04Speaker 06

  There's a uniform. There is expectation of behavior and order and discipline.

• 20:08Avery Trufelman?

  According to Professor Dwyer McNulty, there's this idea that Catholic schools have to prove that they can make their kids as well behaved, if not better behaved, than public school students. And so they decided to do what the elite convent schools once did, which is have all the students in uniforms, which promoted their values of modesty and propriety.

• 20:31Speaker 06

  The bottom line is Catholics in America are the minority and they're the cultural minority, although there's lots of Catholics. So you weren't outfitting the elite Catholics. You were outfitting the daughters of the workaday Catholics. And so you had to make something that was presentable, economical, and that you could manufacture a huge amount.

• 20:56Avery Trufelman?

  So Catholic schools turned to uniform manufacturers like Victor Eisenberg.

• 21:01Speaker 06

  Victor Eisenberg had also been involved with the military. He had made police uniforms.

• 21:08Avery Trufelman?

  It should be said that Victor Eisenberg is a Jew. Jews ran the schmatta business. I just think it's so funny how much of Guaisha American culture like we made.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  So this man had a monopoly on development of the Catholic school uniform because there weren't so many places you could get a uniform.

• 21:26Avery Trufelman?

  Shrewd businessman that he was, Victor Eisenberg, would create these multi-year contracts. And it was really smart.

• 21:33Speaker 06

  That is a contract that just, those uniforms really don't change for years and years.

• 21:40Avery Trufelman?

  Those early mass-produced uniforms were basically like white blouses with simple, solid jumpers. And they were cut like sacks. They were really simple clothes that were easy to churn out. And boy, does Eisenberg churn them out.

• 21:54Speaker 06

  One of the reasons I think that things take off after World War II is that you get this visual explosion, right? You have the camera and you have pictures in the newspaper and magazines.

• 22:04Avery Trufelman?

  It became this trope of like the gaggle of Catholic schoolgirls like taking the bus to school.

• 22:08Speaker 06

  And suddenly Catholics are seeing each other and orders are seeing each other and saying, oh, this is what is happening.

• 22:15Avery Trufelman?

  Catholic clothing started to cohere into an identity. And by the 1960s, that identity was plaid.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  A lot of these parochial schools are Irish Catholic. That could have been a reason for the plaid, but also that it was just a popular trend in US culture at that time was the plaid. But I believe that the plaid becomes more prominent in the 60s because of a man whose name I always butcher because it's kind of weird, but Benninger.

• 22:46Avery Trufelman?

  Benninger, Benninger.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  I was saying Benninger.

• 22:49Speaker 06

  George Bendinger. It's a different uniform company and that's a decision to move in the tartan or plaid direction.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  This guy developed a genius plan of creating an individual tartan for every school. So you could show off what specific parochial school you went to through your uniform.

• 23:12Avery Trufelman?

  And by the end of the 1960s, Catholicism is increasingly something that Americans want to show off.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Catholics, specifically like Catholic school kids, were really prominently displayed in the media as a way of fighting communism.

• 23:27Speaker 06

  If communism is Godless, then uniforms are full of God.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  And like, obviously communist Russia was secular, right?

• 23:35Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah, it's this idea of like, we have religious freedom. Like, we let these Catholics be here.

• 23:39Speaker 06

  And so something that happens that historians have identified is that where Catholics had kind of been on the margins of society, they were cultural outsiders, they become cultural insiders in the Cold War period.

• 23:53Avery Trufelman?

  Around this time, Kennedy is about to become president, a Catholic president. It's starting to become clear that maybe Catholicism is not so much of a threat to the American project.

• 24:03Speaker 07

  There's a sense of like, we'll look to the parochial schools, look how orderly.

• 24:06Avery Trufelman?

  It's kind of like they had won the discipline wars.

• 24:09Speaker 07

  Right, like, look how disciplined and obedient the kids are in those spaces.

• 24:13Avery Trufelman?

  So then public schools got to thinking, hmm. Uniforms.

• 24:17Speaker 07

  We should be doing it more like that.

• 24:19Avery Trufelman?

  Especially because increasingly, public schools were starting to be seen as chaotic.

• 24:25Speaker 07

  And then, as there becomes more and more concern about school disorder, which is a side note, is really often just channeling anxiety about social change. And then the threat becomes much more like non-white, particularly black or brown, children.

• 24:39Avery Trufelman?

  And the school uniform arises to combat this so-called threat. The question is, how legal is it? Is imposing a uniform, or even a dress code, a suppression of free speech? Really? After the break.

• 24:59Avery Trufelman?

  In the early days of the American public school system, there was this big question around discipline. How will we make the children behave?

• 25:07Speaker 07

  Horace Mann is like, "We're not going to use the crude instruments of corporal punishment, but scientifically, that's not how you shape kids' behavior."

• 25:16Avery Trufelman?

  Dr. Rachel Lissy, once again.

• 25:18Speaker 07

  It starts even in the earliest public schools. There was a sense of like, the best way to shape behavior is through relationship. And this aligns with the feminizing of teaching, I should also just say. But if we have these female teachers that are like mommies to their classroom, kids will not want to disappoint their mommies. If every classroom has a female teacher who we can pay half as much, so it's very convenient, then kids will want to please them, and that's how we'll create order in the classroom.

• 25:41Avery Trufelman?

  By this logic, no one would think that you could punish a kid by kicking them out of school.

• 25:47Speaker 07

  Why would you suspend a kid? Because then you're removing them from the supervision of this system.

• 25:52Avery Trufelman?

  Right, you'd be casting your child out.

• 25:53Speaker 07

  Exactly, exactly, right? So that we have this responsibility, and we should be, if anything, we should be institutionalizing the kid. We should be increasing our control over them, not relinquishing it.

• 26:03Avery Trufelman?

  And then there was this massive shift.

• 26:05Speaker 07

  In the late 1950s, early 1960s, where we shifted in both our policy and our rhetoric, so I really focus in on a set of incidents that started with this incident in 1957.

• 26:18Avery Trufelman?

  Okay, so this happened in New York, in a public school.

• 26:23Speaker 07

  Where a kid who was 17 years old, he was actually truant at the time. So he didn't, wasn't enrolled in any school. He had recently returned from a psychiatric facility. But he goes, he's been having some issues with another student outside of class. And he goes into this kid's classroom in his school in Brooklyn and he throws a bottle of lye.

• 26:41Avery Trufelman?

  And he threw it on this other kid's face.

• 26:45Speaker 07

  It nearly blinds this kid. It splatters on other kids and burns them. Two teachers go to help. They also get injured as well.

• 26:52Avery Trufelman?

  This kid's name was Maurice Kessler and the incident was largely known as the Kessler Lye Incident.

• 27:00Speaker 07

  It gets picked up by the Southern press. And the Southern press comes out and they say, do you see what's happening in Brooklyn? That's what happens when you try to integrate.

• 27:08Avery Trufelman?

  And the Kessler Lye Incident became this massive blow up because the kid in question, Maurice Kessler, was black.

• 27:16Speaker 07

  And the kid that he attacked was white.

• 27:18Avery Trufelman?

  And it gets written up in all the papers. The South is like, see, we know how to run our schools just fine. Like, we don't have these accidents. So this is a New York story, but really this is a national story because everybody is really glomming onto what's happening in this liberal hotbed.

• 27:35Speaker 07

  I think there's something unique about the sort of New York and the national imagination, so to speak. They're not actually concerned about what's happening in the New York City public schools. They want New York to look bad. And so this becomes a way to not only be like, disorder is because of schools, not because we've created this unjust system and there's lack of support in housing and the segregation and it's nothing to do with those things. It's because the school is incompetent and also this is about crime. This isn't just childish misbehavior.

• 28:00Avery Trufelman?

  And so this case gets put before this judge named Samuel Lebowitz.

• 28:08Speaker 07

  Like, this kid had really bad luck. Judge Samuel Lebowitz was like a real larger-than-life personality.

• 28:14Avery Trufelman?

  Who has been waiting for a case like this, has holding down life. Like, he is a really charismatic guy with a lot of thoughts.

• 28:20Speaker 07

  Just basically talking about how the city's approach to juvenile delinquency is psychiatric mumbo jumbo and it's like the soft in the head of the approach and it's coddling kids. And what kids really need is like a return to good old fashioned hierarchical discipline. You know, he says like the strap, they need the old strap behind the woodshed.

• 28:39Avery Trufelman?

  This is when we get the policy of widespread.

• 28:45Avery Trufelman?

  Sometimes, causeless suspension.

• 28:49Speaker 07

  So the suspension policy change that happens following this unwanted kind of national attention, the Board of Ed says, "Principals, you can suspend kids. Just send them home. We'll figure out what to do with them later." At the time, this seemed like totally crazy to people. They were like, "Why would you kick kids out of school?"

• 29:06Avery Trufelman?

  Right. We're trying to get them to school.

• 29:07Speaker 07

  Right.

• 29:08Avery Trufelman?

  But this is going to be really important to the idea of how schools function.

• 29:14Speaker 07

  And in the, basically, the beginning of 1958, a year after this terrible incident happens, this suspension policy is made permanent. And the superintendent comes out and he makes this announcement. He says something like, "It's important that a principal have the authority to say to a youngster, 'Young man, you get out of here. We cannot have you disturbing the other youngsters.'" You see this, like, real sense of, like, we're not talking about children. It's these almost adults and this very punitive idea of, like, "Some kids are good, some kids are bad."

• 29:41Avery Trufelman?

  It starts to become more and more normal to just kick kids out of school. It's sort of the origin of, like, "Oh, there are bad apples in these, in these schools."

• 29:50Speaker 07

  And this shift towards criminalizing is counteracted by a shift towards having a clear codification of students' rights. There's parts of it that sort of kick off in response to Vietnam and also, like, civil rights protests, but it was this idea of, like, "I can wear an anti-war symbol and I have rights to do that." The kind of classic, like, it's like a uniform thing, too, with Tinker and Des Moines.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  There's this case, Tinker versus Des Moines, wherein a young teenage student wore a armband, a black armband, to school to protest the Vietnam War, to show mourning for the people that had been lost in the Vietnam War on both sides.

• 30:34Avery Trufelman?

  It's a public school?

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Yes, this is a public school district. Her name was Mary Beth Tinker.

• 30:41Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah, you met Mary Beth?

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. I was really shy. I was 13 years old. I was nervous and scared the day that I wore a black

• 30:48Speaker 04

  Black armband at school, but it was part of a group project called Islands for Peace.

• 30:54Avery Trufelman?

  Mary Beth Tinker was one of a number of students in her Des Moines Public School who were going to wear these black armbands to advocate for peace. And it didn't seem like there was anything against their school dress code in that.

• 31:05Speaker 04

  Because they allowed black armbands in the Des Moines schools if you were sad about the football game.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Very importantly, in this case, the armband was not a distracting feature added to her clothing. It didn't have any text on it even. There was nothing disruptive about this form of protest. It was very understated.

• 31:27Speaker 04

  But then the principals heard about it and then they made a rule against black armbands.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  All the students that wore the armband to school were suspended.

• 31:36Speaker 04

  Five kids were suspended, but I learned a lesson. Even if you're shy and scared and even sometimes you might back down, you can still make a difference because here we are still talking about it 55 years later.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  So this was an infringement on these students' right to free speech, right? So with the help of the ACLU, they sue the school district because of this suspension. And they won.

• 32:05Speaker 04

  So in the Tinker ruling, the Supreme Court said, yes, you have free speech rights in public school, but you cannot substantially disrupt school.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  So this both opened the door to set a precedent for what students have the right to do, but then also kind of opened a door for schools to be like, okay, we're going to have overarching rules.

• 32:28Speaker 07

  We're happy to work with you on laying out these students' rights, but we also want to be able to lay out these responsibilities. And the responsibilities is what becomes elaborated into this discipline code.

• 32:37Avery Trufelman?

  And when I was talking to Rachel Listie, she showed me this code of conduct that applies to a lot of New York public schools. And there are two pages of like students' rights and then 40 pages of things you're not allowed to do.

• 32:49Speaker 07

  It's like 40 pages of this like very like minutia of discipline code.

• 32:53Avery Trufelman?

  And this represents another deep philosophical change in the way that American public schools are administered. Teachers basically exchanged being in loco parentis for bureaucracy.

• 33:07Speaker 07

  There's one way of understanding this, which is like students clamored for this. They wanted codes. Parents wanted to be able to say like, "Why are you suspending my kid?" And they wanted more bureaucratic ways of saying, "It's because they violated this thing," rather than a more amorphous, "They misbehaved."

• 33:21Avery Trufelman?

  In some ways, it's easier. Instead of being like, "Well, because I said so." Or like, "I don't like that." You can't be a parent anymore. You have to cite Article 112 in the rulebook.

• 33:30Speaker 07

  So like, "Hey, don't blame me. I'm not a parent. Just look at the code. And the code, it will tell you what they did."

• 33:36Avery Trufelman?

  Does it say anything about clothes in the code?

• 33:38Speaker 07

  It sure does. "Wearing apparel that is unsafe or materially disruptive to the educative process."

• 33:46Avery Trufelman?

  Hmm, a little subjective.

• 33:47Speaker 07

  So that is infraction number eight. And this is 2001. This is a low-level infraction. This is a Level 1 or 2, but one of the things in all of these codes is that multiple Level 1s and 2s can become Level 4s and 5s. So if you repeatedly have the issue, over time, that becomes a thing.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Obviously, this creates so many levels of consequences and is one of the reasons that we have the school-to-prison pipeline in the United States. School-to-prison pipeline has become a very popular term, but essentially, it talks about a collection of punitive rules that discipline kids for what is deemed improper behavior, but really just pushes them into a system in which these sort of punitive rules become the norm. I talked to Dr. DeWitt Scott, who is based in Chicago. My name is DeWitt Scott. I am the Director for the Angelina Padrillo Center for Diversity in Indigenous Cultural Affairs at Northeastern Illinois University.

• 34:51Speaker 05

  In Chicago. So I always felt that mandating uniforms, particularly in public schools, has never really been the answer.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  We can see this sprouting a lot from the policies created in the 90s.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  The President of the United States.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  So in 1996, President Clinton gave an address in which he offered uniforms as a potential solution to violence in public schools.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  I challenge all our schools to teach character education, to teach good values and good citizenship. And if it means that teenagers will stop killing each other over designer jackets, then our public schools should be able to require their students to wear school uniforms.

• 35:34Avery Trufelman?

  I mean, it is bonkers to dedicate time in the State of the Union to school uniforms.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  This creates a wave of schools implementing harsher dress codes and eventually, public schools implementing uniforms.

• 35:48Speaker 05

  Instituting the uniforms just overall didn't achieve what Clinton felt it would achieve. I think it gave schools another reason to penalize students. You have students who would get penalized for not having the right shirt, not having the right belt, not having their shirt tucked in, not having the right shoes, not having the right colored shoes. It created another door for more rules.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  Even what Bill Clinton said specifically is very racialized. And the places where these uniforms are implemented are largely in black communities.

• 36:23Speaker 05

  There was a charter school. I'm not going to name the school, but it's a prominent charter school in Chicago. I'll say that much. I don't know if they do this now, but this had to be 10 years ago. If a student was out of a uniform, then they got a financial penalty, a dollar for the wrong shirt, five dollars for no belt, so on and so forth. I had a nephew who was at that school. And at the end of the semester, he had a $600-plus bill. His mom couldn't pay him. This becomes tuition.

• 36:50Avery Trufelman?

  I feel like that also goes back to the other thing Bill Clinton said in that paragraph, which actually, I'd never read the full speech, but he's talking about charter schools.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  I challenge every state to give all parents the right to choose which public school their children will attend and to let teachers...

• 37:05Speaker 01

  New schools with a charter they can keep only if they do a good job. Yeah, totally. I think that when you see kids in uniforms, they're usually charter school kids, specifically in New York.

• 37:17Speaker 07

  In the early 2000s charter school ed reform, one of the ideas was every parent gets to pick the school that's the right fit. And so this is a way of marketing.

• 37:28Avery Trufelman?

  Almost in the same way that Catholic uniforms first came about as like marketing.

• 37:32Speaker 07

  You know, especially in charter schools where they're not just relying on public funds, but they have to get funders. If you're a funder and you go into a building and you see all these kids in these cute little bow ties, that feels good. It sort of goes back to this American tradition of, it's almost like the Native American boarding schools, making kids all look in a way that makes middle class values feel right and comfortable. You've taken all this chaos and you've turned it into this order. You must be doing good work here.

• 37:59Avery Trufelman?

  And the message became that if you don't want a uniform, parents, maybe your kids just shouldn't go to this school.

• 38:06Speaker 07

  Because if you really don't want the uniform, this is just not the right fit. And what we want their parents to recognize is they should go back out into the marketplace and shop someplace else. But each school does not have the responsibility to be able to teach every kid that walks in the door. They only have the responsibility to teach the kids that are the right fit. And uniforms becomes one way of filtering. If you're not organized enough to make sure you have the uniforms and you get here on time, then you're probably not the right fit. This is a very classic charter thing is like, we're suspending kids because it's not the right fit.

• 38:38Avery Trufelman?

  So like, when we talk about school uniforms, we're talking about a really broad swath. And they can definitely be wielded as punishment.

• 38:46Speaker 07

  I think that they are pretty superficial and very racialized and class-based.

• 38:52Avery Trufelman?

  But I also think that, and Rachel Listig said as much, she was like, if the school has a good culture, if it is a place that people are excited to be a part of, they can function like team uniforms.

• 39:03Speaker 07

  I think if you have a good, strong culture already, and you've done all of that work, uniforms can help in strengthening that identity and that culture.

• 39:11Avery Trufelman?

  Like, people can be really amped on their uniform. There are schools that love... Their uniforms, which is why I also think that like a cute uniform is kind of important, that it's not just like, shut up, sit over there, wear this bland shirt. And it just seems like the common thread throughout all of this is like, no one asked the kids.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  That's exactly what Mary Beth Tinker said as well.

• 39:33Speaker 04

  I think it should be up to students, how the dress code is expressed in their school, and that students should have some say. So students, I think, should be on the school boards. They should be voting members. They should be in the administrative committees of their schools.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Children should have a voice. They have their own opinions and their own thoughts about what they want to wear. All right, hey, kids, I'm here to talk to you.

• 40:00Avery Trufelman?

  Grace intrepidly went to talk to some real life high schoolers.

• 40:04Speaker 03

  I like the uniform. It's really easy to decide what I'm going to wear in the morning. I don't mind it. It's, no, it's fine. I wish that we only had one skirt so we didn't have to buy twice as many skirts. That's my main complaint.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  Would I rather wear sweatpants and a sweatshirt every day? Absolutely, but, you know, it's fine.

• 40:19Avery Trufelman?

  And these high schoolers actually go to Grace's own high school.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Wow, this is so nice. Oh, my gosh, this was my Latin room.

• 40:27Avery Trufelman?

  So tell me about going back to Aquinas. What was it like?

• 40:30Speaker 01

  It was really weird, obviously, because it's my high school.

• 40:36Speaker 04

  I found it interesting that you were doing a piece on school uniforms because you always had your creative flair.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  And I'm talking to my principal, who I will never call Leslie.

• 40:49Speaker 04

  My name is Leslie Mitros, and I was head of school for the last 20 years here at Aquinas Academy in Pittsburgh. And we have learned some things along the way, Grace, that's for sure.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it sounds like things have changed in a very positive way. The uniform did, in fact, change a lot. Like, I was required to wear a blazer in high school. And now, instead of the blazer, they have a quarter zip.

• 41:16Speaker 04

  The girls in particular didn't love the blazer. So I said, well, why don't you write me a proposal?

• 41:22Speaker 02

  For something that's an alternative. And so they did their research and they were actually the ones who proposed that sweater.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's so far from what we would have been allowed to wear in high school when I was there. And they're way less strict about the accessories.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  I can't think of the last time we were splitting hairs over earrings or even the number of piercings. You'll see that when you walk around, there's a lot of individuality there.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  When I was in school, they had a lot of problems with the way that they were enforcing the uniform. Specifically that the girls felt really uncomfortable. It made you feel like you were being looked at in a way that was inappropriate.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  The hardest part of it, to be honest with you, Grace, is that none of us are in the business of liking to embarrass kids. But at some point, they need to kind of get that message that it's got to be. It's got to be right. It's a place of work and we want to keep that in the front of their mind, that when they come in the door to go to school, they're here for a reason and it's to do the best they can academically.

• 42:23Avery Trufelman?

  And I guess this is where I come down with it is like, no one should be punished so severely for what they wear. I don't think accessories should be illegal. I don't think hair color should be illegal. I don't think it's about quashing expression. But I do think it's like a laboratory to practice speaking up and to practice having these debates. And like, I know we kind of joked in the beginning that maybe these things exist only to be debated, but I kind of think that all of this comes back to this notion of debate, not only because the uniform is such a classic debate, but that everything should be up for discussion. The uniform should be up for discussion. I think it was Dr. Scott who was like, you don't just fix it and move on. Thinking about school uniforms, thinking about all of these policies, there

• 43:07Avery Trufelman?

  never be a day where it's like, okay, great, that's done. They're addressing these questions. We're bringing new questions, right? You have to continue. You just have to revisit it. I don't know anything of significance in this world where it's just you get to a point and you stop. That's what it is to live in a society and to go to a school.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I will say having to wear a uniform my whole life definitely shaped my style and my identity.

• 43:35Avery Trufelman?

  Especially because like, look, you're wearing a version of a school uniform right now. Did you do that intentionally?

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Yes, so for as much as I hated my school uniform, I did want to dress as close to it as possible today. As you can see, this is my actual vest from from school. So it has the school emblem on it. Oh, my God. It's so cute. Like, it's stylish, while the vest is, right? So there are all kinds of tips and tricks on how to make your uniform cuter.

• 44:12Avery Trufelman?

  Thank you so much to Grace Tarducci. What a dream to work with. Thank you for embarking on this project with me. Grace, as she mentioned, is an animator. See all of her animation at gracetarducci.com. And she made a little custom animation of all of the different uniforms throughout time. Like, her work is so great. You can see that animation at articlesofinterest.substack.com. Many thanks as well to my fearless script editor, Allison Behringer. Thank you for putting your eyes on this. It's so good to work with you again, buddy. Thank you so much also to Debbie Schaefer Jacobs at the Smithsonian. Your research was invaluable to this project. And thank you also to Prabha Gurung. What a dream to be able to interview this visionary designer.

• 44:57Avery Trufelman?

  His story about Catholic school uniforms is just one of the many incredible tales of his life that you can read in his memoir, Walk Like a Girl by Prabha Gurung. It's out now. I can't recommend it enough. He's had an incredible life. Also, huge thanks to our friends at American Public Media, APM. We worked with them on making a version of this show for kids. If you are a kid or you know a kid who is... Thinking about uniforms or have questions about where uniforms come from. The show is called Forever Ago and it's really fun. It tends to be focused on younger kids, like this kid Hannah, who I'm obsessed with.

• 45:36Speaker 03

  I think it's helpful to have a uniform. You don't need to decide what to wear. You don't need to be made fun of or asked why you're wearing that.

• 45:45Avery Trufelman?

  I love Hannah. Ugh, so that show is called Forever Ago. Check it out. And I'm gonna make like two more episodes over the summer. And then in the fall, there'll be another proper season. So, thank you for your patience, everyone. All your messages about like, when are you coming back? They're so, I mean, they stress me out, but they're really sweet. So, thank you very much. It's nice to be back making podcasts. So, thank you for listening.